Tail of the Dragon crash survivor shares final goodbye
videos
KNOXVILLE, TN – (October 26, 2016) Kevin Diepenbrock was
dying, and he knew it. As he lay in a ditch unable to move and barely able to
breathe, he filmed his final goodbyes to his parents and his wife.
"See you guys soon," he says as the first video
ends. By the time he filmed the third video in total darkness, his voice had
grown hoarse and faltering, and he doesn't sound quite so optimistic.
Kevin and Courtney Diepenbrock watched the videos for the
first time on Monday night in his hospital room at the University of Tennessee
Medical Center. He initially decided he didn't want anyone else to see them,
and deleted them from his phone.
But on Tuesday, he retrieved them from cloud storage and
shared them with the News Sentinel.
On Oct. 15, Diepenbrock and Phillip Polito, his riding
companion and co-worker at a natural gas plant near Philadelphia, Pa., tumbled
more than 100 feet down a rocky embankment after their motorcycles collided on
a notorious stretch of Highway 129 near mile marker 4 called "The
Dragon."
Polito, 29, of Perryville, Mo., was killed in the crash, and
the 41-year-old Diepenbrock was flung out of sight from the motorists who get a
thrill from the treacherous road's sharp curves and scenic views. With two
punctured lungs, 17 breaks in 12 ribs and multiple spinal fractures,
Diepenbrock couldn't move. He had no cell phone signal. He lay on the ground
for 30 hours before he was rescued, yelling as he listened to every car that
passed and slowly realizing that maybe; he wouldn't make it out alive.
SOURCE: Knoxville News Sentinel
