| Cymbal Man Freq. 2005-01-31, 10:38 am |
| RACINE, WISCONSIN. -- Late at night, when all is dark and he struggles to fall
asleep, Tony Casper thinks back to the choices he made that November night and
wonders how he survived.
The stolen car. The vodka. The joyriding with teenage pals along the country
roads of southern Minnesota, smashing mailboxes and stealing gasoline along the
way.
It wasn't until the car swerved, the door flew open and the 14-year-old was
thrown to the ditch that he realized just how bad those choices were.
That's when Casper discovered he couldn't stand or sit up. That's when his
buddies, terrified of being caught for drinking and driving, ran scared into the
night, leaving him crippled, bleeding and alone in the ditch.
He'd begged them not to leave. But they left anyway, telling him they'd get
help. They didn't. It wasn't until several hours later, in the light of morning,
that a couple on their way to work found the boy -- wearing only a sweater and
jeans in the near-freezing chill and screaming for help.
"I thought I was going to die," Casper said the other day, while sitting in the
living room of his mother's home in southeastern Wisconsin, where he is
recovering from the Nov. 4 accident. "I still have nightmares about it."
Nearly three months of hospitalization and therapy and a move back to Wisconsin
have brought some hope that the teenager, initially paralyzed from the waist
down, may come close to a full recovery. But the memory of the night and the
physical and emotional scars will stay with him always.
"I get sad pretty much when I go to bed," Casper said. "I just go over and over
the accident. I think about what could have happened if I didn't drink, if I
didn't get in the car. I'm mad at myself for following those guys.
"I picked the wrong friends."
A shy boy with close-cropped hair and a quick laugh, Casper, who turned 15 last
month, always has been more of a follower than a leader, his mother said.
"Tony tends to find the bad kids, the kids who are cool and tend to get the
girls," said Jamie Markovic, who divorced Tony's father when the boy was only
months old.
So it was after moving to Onalaska, Wis., in the spring of 2003 to live with his
father, that Casper began hanging out with a tougher crowd and started smoking
cigarettes and marijuana.
"I wanted to fit in with the crowd, and they seemed cool at the time," he said.
After his father, who ran a convenience store, moved the family to Stewartville,
Minn., a few miles south of Rochester, Casper befriended a 19-year-old boy who
introduced him to alcohol and methamphetamine.
Classes got cut, grades went bad. Once a promising baseball player, he found his
chance of making the team slipping away as detention hours piled up.
Last October, the behavior got worse. For kicks, Casper said, he and a friend
stole an old car from a dairy farm near Stewartville. A week later, after
finding the car abandoned near town, Casper jumped in and took it for another
ride.
From there, the night brought more trouble.
To kill time, he hooked up with several of his friends, some of whom rode in a
second car, and together they drove the back roads of Olmsted and Mower
counties. He said they stole gas for the cars, snatched a bottle of vodka and
raced along the gravel roads swigging a combination of vodka and root beer.
The boys took turns driving, and at one point, Casper said, some of his friends
opened the doors of the stolen car, using them to smash into trees and
mailboxes.
"It was fun at the time," he said.
But the joyride ended when the stolen car swerved on a gravel road and Casper,
riding unbuckled in the passenger seat, fell out. The driver, Tyler Dostal, 16,
of Stewartville, told police that Casper was hanging out the window and that he
was trying to pull him back into the car when he lost control of it.
But Casper said he thinks he fell because the door, by then badly damaged,
wouldn't latch. "I just remember laying in the ditch with blood coming out."
Dostal and several friends riding in the second car screamed at Casper to get
up, but he couldn't move his legs. The boys then grabbed him and pushed him into
the back seat of the second car and took off, driving around for nearly an hour
trying to figure out what to do.
Worried they'd be caught drinking and driving, the boys returned to the ditch
where the stolen car sat and put Casper on the ground nearby.
He recalled pleading with them: "'Don't leave me here to die.' They said they
were going to get help. They said, 'Don't tell anybody or we'll kick your XXX.'
"
Casper's night
Casper didn't know that he was paralyzed or that his ribs were broken or that
his lung was punctured, which kept him from crying. All he knew for sure was
that he was bleeding badly from a cut on his head, freezing in the 32-degree
chill and gasping for air.
He wanted to believe his friends would return and kept looking to the street,
"but no one passed."
His breathing, short and labored, scared him. It was fast, he said, "like a
couple of last breaths and then you die."
After about 20 minutes, he fell asleep, his belly full of vodka and his body
numb from the liquor and injuries. When he woke, the sky was light. He started
screaming again and tried to crawl to the car, thinking a cell phone was inside.
"But I couldn't move," he said.
Eventually, a couple heading to their jobs in Rochester saw the car and stopped.
Then, they saw Casper.
"They started freaking out," he recalled. "They just said 'Oh my God! Oh my
God!' And they put a blanket over me. The next thing I remember was hearing
sirens, and then the helicopter."
By the time he got to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester, Casper was suffering from
hypothermia. He'd fractured a vertebra, punctured a lung, cracked his sternum,
broken several ribs, suffered nerve damage along his right arm, right hand and
bladder. What's more, he had a 6-inch gash in his scalp, which cost him two
pints of blood.
Doctors told his mother that Casper probably wouldn't walk again. When she told
her son, he started to cry.
It took 11 days to be able to eat solid foods and a month before he could move
his legs. When he did, Markovic said, it was only about a centimeter.
At one point, Markovic, who works in an orthodontic lab, told her son that when
they returned to Wisconsin, "we'd have to buy another house" to accommodate a
wheelchair.
Casper told her, "Don't. ... I'm going to walk before I get out of here."
Recovering nicely
By the time he was discharged Dec. 31, he was walking with the help of crutches.
By the time he registered for school in mid-January, he was able to walk short
distances without them.
"He's the miracle child," his mother said last week. "The doctors are just in
shock. One doctor came up to me and said 'I can't explain it.' "
The scar on his scalp has healed nicely. His ribs, sternum and lung are all
healing, too. Still, he's reminded constantly of his limitations. Balance is a
problem. So is the nerve damage in his right arm and hand and the short-term
memory loss.
When the local newspaper recently posted the date and time for local baseball
tryouts, Casper got angry.
"I want to play so bad," he said. "I probably won't be able to do that again."
He blames himself for making poor decisions. He blames his friends for moving
him in and out of the car and leaving him in the ditch. While he was
hospitalized, only Dostal spoke with him, Casper said, and that conversation
lasted only a few minutes after a mutual friend set up a phone call.
Last month, Mower County authorities filed juvenile petitions charging Dostal
and three other boys -- Jared T. Kraetsch, 16, of Racine; Joshua J. Mourning,
16, of Stewartville, and Jason L. Grove, 17, of Rochester -- with felonies in
connection with the incident. The charges range from criminal vehicular
operation and theft of a vehicle to underage drinking and failing to report an
accident.
Not all four were present at the time of the accident; all four cases are
pending.
Casper didn't get off, either. While hospitalized, he pleaded guilty to a charge
of conspiracy to steal a car and was ordered to serve two years of probation and
40 hours of community service and to write a letter of apology to the car's
owner.
"I don't really like thinking about the accident because I get a real weird
feeling in my stomach," he said. "It's like a shame. I'm just mad at myself for
doing everything I used to do."
Still, Jamie Markovic said, "coming from where he came from, you couldn't ask
for more."
Casper's father could not be reached for comment. After being discharged from
the hospital, Casper moved back to Racine, Wis., to live with his mother.
Markovic said Casper hugs her more now and is more patient with his 9-year-old
brother. Never a churchgoer, he's now a Sunday regular. "It was like an angel
was with me that night to help me get through it," Casper said.
He says he's "doing great" and talks of umpiring or caddying to stay involved
with sports. He also hopes to tell his story to other students so they might
learn from his experience.
Last week, Casper returned to his old middle school only a few blocks from his
Wisconsin home, climbing stairs with the help of crutches. A few days before he
started classes, he met with the principal and several teachers and set up a
schedule.
"We're glad to have you back," said Dan Thielen, the principal. "If there's
anything you need, just let us know."
Later, as Casper walked outside and into the snow and cold, he turned to his
mother and said, "I'm going to have friends again, Mom."
Jamie Markovic smiled.
"As long as you pick the right ones," she said, "you'll be OK."
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