While Kristina Pyle was working in the emergency room of Banner Del E. Webb hospital in Surprise on Saturday, her husband became the victim of a deadly rear-end crash. The call came in while Pyle was on the E.R. floor.
"We got the patch, an EMS call that we were getting a trauma victim. I didn't know who it was at that point," she said.
She knew EMS workers were trying their best to resuscitate the motorcycle rider who had been rear-ended near Litchfield and Greenway roads. She also knew her husband, Derek Pyle, was out running errands, but she did not know whether he was on his bike.
An unlicensed teen..accused of hitting and killing this motorcyclist. His wife an ER nurse..at work when it happened pic.twitter.com/BoZ3L4r2V6
— Sonu Wasu ABC15 (@SonuWasu) April 4, 2016
While E.R staff stayed on the phone with EMS workers at the scene, a worried Kristina Pyle sent a text message to her husband.
"You didn't ride your motorcycle right?" she said in the message.
When he did not respond, she got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. So, she sent another text message to him.
"We just got word of a fatality of a motorcycle accident," she wrote.
After 15 minutes she said, "[Please] tell me you are OK. I am feeling nauseated and need to know you are OK. I know I am being irrational, but it's framing me out," she wrote.
Ten minutes after her last text message to her husband, EMS workers asked for permission to stop resuscitation, and doctors pronounced the trauma victim dead at 5:46 p.m. That was the moment that time froze for Kristina.
A few minutes later, her supervisor and a Surprise police officer showed up to let her know the trauma victim who had just been pronounced dead was her husband.
A day later, Kristina told ABC15 that she is at peace knowing her husband was at peace and with the Lord. She knew the accident did not make sense, but good would come out of it, even though she may never know what that was.
Kristina said their love story started late in life.
"Our mother's arranged it, so we always laughed and said it was an arranged marriage," she said.
Tomorrow would have been the ninth anniversary of the day they met. Kristina described her husband as a very careful motorcycle rider.
That tragic day started off as a routine day for both of them. Derek drove for Uber and Lyft and had a busy day giving lots of rides with the airshow taking place. Kristina went to work at the ER.
She said she knows her husband was out running errands when he was killed.
Surprise police say Derek was stopped at a red light when his motorcycle was rear-ended by an SUV. The driver of that SUV turned out to be a 16-year old boy without a license.
