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With the wipers going full blast, Rhonda Richards could barely see through her windshield. A cold rain was pounding rural York County, Pennsylvania, on November 16, 2006, and now Leibs Creek had burst its banks and was rushing across Hollow Roadin front of her. She slowed and stopped, engine running. Rhonda and her son Matt, 15, had come to pick up his five-year-old cousin, Jake, at a bus stop. Jake’s mother couldn’t get there in the treacherous weather. Flooding had blocked her driveway.
Matt was fond of his cousin, a sensitive little kid. He liked to roughhouse with him and teach him stuff like wrestling moves. They played soccer together. Recently Matt and his father had taken Jake on a hunting trip. Out in the woods before dawn, the boys stood together and watched the sky lighten. It was awesome.
Matt slogged forward, waving his hands above his head. With every step, the stream grew deeper. Its power was surprising. He had a hard time keeping his balance.
Rhonda watched Matt shuffle up the road and glanced at the yellow bus creeping toward them. A hundred feet away, its bright caution lights blinked on as it slowed to a stop. Rhonda had Matt in the corner of her eye—then he vanished.
Had he tripped? Rhonda hurried toward the spot where she’d last seen her son. Nothing. No one. Then she saw something just above the rushing water on the left side of the road—it was Matt’s head. She screamed.
It took Matt a few moments to understand what had happened. He’d stepped into a roadside culvert that was completely invisible under the runoff from Leibs Creek. As he hit the face of a wedge-shaped concrete box that funneled the creek under the road, his body twisted, and his back was pinned against the upper ledge of the structure by the tremendous force of water swirling through it.
Only the teen’s athletic quickness and strength enabled him to grasp the upper edge before being swept below. He wasn’t quick enough, however, to keep his legs from hooking underneath the lip of the structure. He was bent backward in an L shape, clamped like a man on a medieval torture rack.
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