NORTH BEND – A man in his mid-40s attempted suicide by asphyxiation on Aug. 4 in a remote area of the Mount Baker/Snoqualmie National Forest.
The man had parked his Chevy Blazer in a remote, wooded area near Interstate-90’s Exit 42 and attached a metallic dryer hose to his exhaust pipe with duct tape, feeding it through a window. His attempt was foiled when a contractor and his employee came across the scene at approximately 10:30 a.m.
Gary Byers, who owns Vancouver, Wash.-based Americoatings, an industrial epoxy coatings company, and Carlos Martinez, one of his employees, had the day off from contracting work at Mount Si High School. The two were unfamiliar with the area and had headed out along I-90 in hopes of finding a good spot to fish. They took Exit 42’s Tinkham Road to the entrance of the Mount Baker/Snoqualmie National Forest.
“Carlos and I were going fishing, looking for a spot to get down [to] the river, and tried several places, and we came down this road we saw the Chevy Blazer parked there with the windows all fogged up,” Byers said.
At first Martinez and Byers didn’t know what to make of the Blazer, as it was partially concealed by brush and ground cover in the isolated turnaround off a dead-end road.
“Then we saw the pipe coming out of the exhaust, going up and in the window, and so we stopped and I told Carlos to call 911,” said Byers. “I jumped out, pulled the hose from the window and saw the car was still running at that point, so I ran up to the door and opened the door and there was a guy in there that … looked to be dead, very stiff.”
Byers turned the car off and dragged the man out. “I just knew that I couldn’t survey the situation with him in the car filled with carbon monoxide and if he had any chance at all I had to get him out.”
The flushed, unconscious man began coughing and sputtering. Byers rolled him on his side and told Martinez to call 911.
“It seemed like his first breath was kind of questionable whether it was really even a breath [but] then he did start breathing,” Byers said. “At first I thought he was dead when I pulled him out, [but] then I realized when he started to breath just a little that he might still be alive, but I felt like I was removing a corpse from the car at that time.”
Byers had no idea how long the man was at the location before they arrived, but he estimated that it couldn’t have been any more than 30 minutes. “So I would say that we had to have been here not too much longer after he did it, but he was past that point … [there] was mucus coming out of his nose. His whole body was stiff. I mean, to handle the body you would think that he was dead.”
Because the two men were not familiar with the area, they had a difficult time giving 911 operators directions. “So I finally told him [Martinez] ‘just give what you can and tell them I’m going to head back in my Dodge and head back up there to the main exit and I’ll meet them out there.’ So, that’s what we did.”
Byers proceeded to flag down the Eastside Fire and Rescue aid car that took around 10 minutes to arrive at the exit, which was three miles from the Blazer. Meanwhile, a King County Sheriff’s Office deputy had arrived on the scene and was with the man and Martinez as the paramedics arrived.
The paramedics put the man into a chemically-induced coma and gave him oxygen while driving to the next overpass. From there he was airlifted by helicopter to Harborview Medical Center 20 minutes later. Although he remained unconscious, he was responsive, according to the paramedics. He is in stable condition and his identity and exact age remain undisclosed, as per state law.
Byers said the whole incident left him and Martinez badly shaken. The EMTs [emergency medical technicians] later told Byers and Martinez that if they had arrived just a few minutes later, the man would have almost certainly died and was “on the brink of death” when they arrived as it was.
The man had definitely made up his mind to kill himself and had thought the attempt through, Byers said. The metallic dryer hose had been carefully duck-tapped to the exhaust pipe of the Blazer. “You don’t drive out in the woods with a dryer hose,” Byers said, still affected by what he had seen.
“It stays with you a lot longer than you think. It hits you in fazes all day long. I hope the guy makes it and I hope that he gets some help.”
King County Sheriff’s Office Spokesman John Urquhart said that officials at Harborview will try to get the man who tried to kill himself some psychiatric help.
