Virginia: VSP trooper injured in deadly 288 wreck: “I’m just glad I’m still here”

Virginia State Police Trooper J.T. Glasscock remembers only bits and pieces of last month’s tragic accident, but he knows he’s fortunate to be alive. “It was February 15,” he recalls. “Terrible ice came out of nowhere.”

Glasscock was standing on the side of the road on Route 288 trying to clear and investigate a two-vehicle wreck. That’s when another driver came crashing into he and several of the people he was assisting. One of them, 53-year-old Sharon Letender, was killed. Glascock suffered significant injury and was hospitalized for two weeks.

“My left arm was completely shattered from the ball joint to the elbow,” Glasscock recalls. “I had a bruised lung, a fractured hip, two vertebrae broken in my back and a fractured left ankle.

“I guess all of western Richmond was getting hit pretty hard, but in the course of one hour the roads turned abysmal and I don’t think most motorists realized how bad it was getting so quickly because we were watching people crash around us.”

After an extended hospital stay, three surgeries and several blood transfusions, Glasscock returned home this week. While the recovery process is long from over, he remains grateful.

“The limitations are frustrating, but the hardest part is coming to grips with how close it was. The hospital was literally counting blood cells to keep me around a couple of days.”

The military man turned state trooper has served tours oversees in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, but his closest call with death came close to home.

“The human body is not meant to be struck by a car at 55 mph, and you’re not supposed to make it,” he said. “I’m just glad I’m still here and we made it.”

“I made it through.”

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