Man survives being hit by car

WASILLA — A man apparently jumping out into traffic wound up surviving a brutal car assault last week.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Justin Farr said he owns a few rental properties in the Valley and was on his way to one of those just before midnight May 17 when he saw two girls running through a parking lot near Blind Nick Drive.

“We turned the corner and there’s a body in the road,” he said. “He was laying on his back and blowing blood up in the air.”

Wasilla police identified the man laying in the road as Benson Filkins, 23.

Farr said military training has taught him about emergency medicine, so he got out to help. He said in five deployments he’s seen a few horrific things, and the state Filkins was in is up there.

Later, talking to those girls who were running through the parking lot, Farr said he got a fuller picture of what happened.

Apparently, Filkins had jumped out in front of one car, which swerved around him, then jumped out in front of a second car, which hit him.

Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden confirmed that.

“He was intoxicated and he was jumping out in front of cars and he jumped out in front of one car that didn’t see him. She hit him,” Belden said. “Several witnesses said he was walking along the side of the road, a car would come along and he would jump out.”

Belden said he wasn’t sure if Filkins was attempting suicide or if he was hitchhiking, trying to make himself visible and misjudged the distance between himself and the car. Either way, he wound up in the hospital.

Mat-Su Borough Deputy Director of Emergency Services Clint Vardeman said that Filkins was in the hospital by 12:30 a.m. Police logged the call to 911 at 11:53 p.m., meaning the whole thing took a half an hour.

Belden said Filkins survived.

“He got a broken arm out of it, I think a couple of lacerations about the head and face, and got hauled off to the hospital, but it certainly wasn’t fatal or anything like that,” Belden said.

Farr said Filkins also had a broken rib or two and a collapsed lung, and probably some pretty severe brain trauma.

“I’d say his brain got jarred up pretty good,” Farr said. “He’s in bad shape.”

He said he had to hold Filkins down at one point as he struggled to get up.

That surprised him, Farr said, considering how injured Filkins was. When he heard police say Filkins was intoxicated that started to make sense.

He mentioned that intoxicated people, since their bodies don’t tense up as much as sober people, tend to fare better in car crashes.

“It probably saved him,” Farr said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.