A Leap of Faith 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
---Taken directly from The Denver Post---
A young man who told friends he wanted to jump from a moving car to earn a tattoo leapt from a Subaru at 40 mph Monday afternoon and died almost instantly.
The 20-year-old man, whose name was not released, died just after 12:30 p.m. Monday after he hurled himself out of the back seat of the car in the middle of Weaver Drive in south Jefferson County.
He had told two friends in the car that he planned to jump, said Colorado State Patrol Cpl. Sean Wheeler. But the friends didn't think he would do it, Wheeler said.
As they were driving him around, the two friends were trying to talk him out of it, he said.
"The person who jumped had been telling his friends for the last month that he needed to jump from a moving car so he could have a traumatic incident in his life so he could get a tattoo," Wheeler said.
Many neighbors in the placid neighborhood near Columbine High School were shaken by the sight of the body. The two other people in the Subaru - driver Erin Grubbs, 19, and Oscar Swansfeger, 18, both of Conifer - hugged each other for hours after the accident and cried as the State Patrol investigated.
Welford Smith said he and his wife were driving home on Weaver from a weekend in the mountains when they came upon the accident. Grubbs and Swansfeger were standing in the street, hysterically calling 911. The victim lay in a puddle of blood.
"It was awful," Smith said.
Smith and his wife went home and came back with two blankets they used to cover the body. Smith's wife took the phone from Swansfeger to talk to 911. They asked her to check the victim's pulse, but there was none, Smith said.
Soon, authorities and paramedics arrived. Smith said the teenagers were in disbelief.
"He kept saying: 'He wanted to jump out of a car. He wanted to feel what it was like,"' Smith said. "They were just hysterical. They didn't know what to do. We didn't know what to do either."
Wheeler said the Subaru was heading eastbound on Weaver when the man jumped from the car near Gray Court. Grubbs told police that she was driving about 40 mph. There is a stop sign at Weaver and Gray, but it was unclear whether the Subaru had slowed for it.
Wheeler said drugs and alcohol were not believed to be involved. Any possible charges are pending, he said.
"Nobody can really give a good explanation of why he needed to jump from a car to get a tattoo or why he needed this tattoo experience," Wheeler said. "This is the strangest thing I've ever seen. There's just no explanation for it at all." Submitted on 09/02/2003
Submitted by:
Robert Wrench
Reference:
The Denver Post - 9/2/2003
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