‘THIS IS A PERSON’
For Baltimore medical students, dissection triggers deep emotion
Daniela Krahe likely will never know the tall gentleman’s name. He was dead when they met, so she didn’t get the chance to ask. She’ll never know where the man grew up or whether he had siblings. She won’t know what made him laugh, what movies he liked to watch or what meal his mother used to make him when he was sick. But there are things Krahe knows about the man that even those who loved him probably will never learn. Earlier this year she spent hours studying his heart, his brain, his lungs in the most intimate of detail. She knows the branching pattern of his arteries, what the mesh looked like that repaired his hernia.
It’s a strange sort of contradiction, one that thousands of medical students like Krahe experience each year. While technology and virtual reality are used increasingly in medical schools across the country to
teach students anatomy and physiology, many — including two based in Baltimore — require future doctors to take a course in which they dissect a human body.
For many students at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the experience means something more than a passing grade. It’s likely that, for the rest of their career, they will remember the person who donated their body to help advance medical research and train future doctors.
Adam Puche does. If he thinks about it, he still can picture the face of the first donor with whom he worked.
“Nobody ever forgets the generosity of that individual,” said Puche, vice chair of neurobiology at the University of Maryland’s medical school.
“I’ve spoken to alumni who graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine 50 years ago. They remember where they were standing
when another driver, 55-year-old Lisa Lea, attempted to merge into the leftmost lane.
Her vehicle struck the front passenger-side door of his car and her gray Acura went through a 156-foot gap in the construction site’s jersey wall barrier, according to a statement of facts Kelly read in court.
Lea’s Acura overturned multiple times and struck the workers, throwing some of them nearly 200 feet. Brown, who was not injured, stopped his car about 880 feet away from the crash, while Lea was taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
Brown answered “yes” to most of BallouWatts’ questions Wednesday, at times so quietly that the judge asked him more than once to speak louder. He answered in the affirmative when she asked whether he had had a chance to discuss his plea with his mother, who was in the courtroom.
Lea faces 28 counts, including felony manslaughter and driving while impaired by drugs. Prosecutors said she had taken prescription medications, including oxycodone, and a blood test returned a positive result for THC.
Her trial is set for April 1.
Kelly said data collected from the Volkswagen’s event recorder found Brown was driving at 122 mph five seconds before the two cars collided, although he told investigators he was going 60 mph. At the time of the collision he was traveling at 111 mph, she said. Witnesses told investigators that before the crash both drivers were going “at a very high rate of speed” and narrowly missing other cars. The speed limit was 55 mph.
A state police investigator determined that Lea’s unsafe lane change was the primary cause of the crash, with driving while impaired and excessive speed as contributing factors. Brown’s excessive speed and aggressive driving also contributed to the crash, Kelly said.
Five employees of Concrete General and one inspector were killed in the March crash. All of them died at the scene.
Brothers Jose Armando Escobar, 52, and Carlos Orlando Villatoro Escobar, 43, of Frederick were killed, along with Mahlon Simmons III, 31; his father, Mahlon Simmons II, of Union Bridge; Rolando Ruiz, 46, of Laurel; and Sybil Lee Dimaggio, 46, of Glen Burnie.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash is ongoing, but a Maryland Occupational Safety and Health report completed in September did not conclude that safety issues at the construction site contributed to the fatal collision.
The Baltimore Sun obtained a redacted copy of the state report, which said a truck with a mounted attenuator, meant to protect construction zones from crashes, was parked in the work zone but not positioned to block workers.
State Highway Administration records show there were at least five incidents involving vehicles crashing into barriers at the Woodlawn work site before March 22.
Following a post-crash investigation, the Maryland Department of Labor cited the Maryland Department of Transportation and Concrete General for failing to post signs warning drivers that construction vehicles could be moving in and out of the work zone, calling the violation “unrelated” to the crash. The highway administration said the signage “would not have prevented” the crash.
Gov. Wes Moore said in November he would implement recommendations from the Work Zone Safety Work Group, a task force convened following the six deaths. Those changes included increasing the presence of state troopers in work zones and providing funding for work zone safety education projects.
Moore said he would introduce a package of bills in the 2024 legislative session with other recommendations, including increasing the penalties for speeding in work zones.