Nearly killed on RI bike path, man seeks angel nurses who saved him

Jim Hunnicutt on the recumbent trike he now rides.​

Nearly killed on R.I. bike path, man seeks angel nurses who saved him The Providence Journal

SOUTH KINGSTOWN - He checked with police, fire and rescue, and no one got their names.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — If you are a nurse who was jogging with a fellow nurse on the William C. O’Neill Bike Path at 10:16 a.m. on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, Jim Hunnicutt has been looking for you.

He’s been looking for you for the last nine years, especially on the anniversary of the bicycle accident that could have killed him.

“If it wasn’t for these two ladies, I’m a corpse,” Hunnicutt, now 56, said this week.

He checked with police, fire and rescue, and no one got their names. The women never called the hospital to find out how he was. “No,” he was told, “nobody ever called.”

They could have been Rhode Islanders or visiting from another state. Sometimes, he says, “I think they were angels. It’s like they vanished from the face of the earth.”

Every day for two years, Hunnicutt had been riding at lunch to lose weight. Starting as he did at 300 pounds, it was doctor’s orders.

He worked in the kitchen at American Power Conversion, now Schneider Electric, across the tracks from Amtrak’s Kingston Station. Every day at 10 a.m. he would say: “I’m de-liming the dishwasher, make sure nobody touches it, I’ll be back at 11:30.”

In nine years of working there, he hadn’t missed a day of work.

That day, he didn’t come back.

That day, as always, he pedaled up Fairgrounds Road to Route 138, crossed the bridge over the tracks and cut through the railroad station parking lot to the start of the bike path.

Often, he said, he wouldn’t see anyone on his eight-mile round trip, especially on the long stretches between road crossings.

That day, however, he overtook two joggers between Larkin Pond Road and the wooden bridge beside a beaver lodge. He noticed they were attractive, maybe in their 30s. One was blonde and the other may have had brown hair.

About 50 yards after the bridge, he said, his front wheel jammed to an instant stop. He and the rest of the bike spun 180 degrees and spiraled into the air, sending his feet over his head.

All 250 pounds of him landed on his right elbow. Not on the grass, inches away, but on the pavement.

“When I fell off the bike, I tried to get back on again,” he said. “Then I saw my arm.

“Holy crap.”

His arm was twisted unnaturally, and a jagged edge of humerus, the long bone between the elbow and shoulder, stuck out 3 or 4 inches.

Blood gushed from his arm. He staggered to a nearby bench.

If he had been alone, he said, he would have bled out on that bench.

He heard shouting. The two joggers were running toward him, yelling, “We’re nurses!”

Attached to his bike was a small first-aid kit. The women found bungee cords and improvised a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

They called for an ambulance. They kept him awake. They gave him his phone so he could call his girlfriend and his daughter.

He was coming out of anesthesia after a four-hour emergency surgery at South County Hospital, he said, and a nurse asked who had done his triage.

He doesn’t remember her exact words, but they were to the effect of: “Whoever did the contraption on your arm saved your life.”

About a week later ...

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