On a dangerous Sacramento road, one young man lost his leg. Another lost his life

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Dirk Couvson was still lying in the street — still bleeding — when he made his first phone call after the crash. He called his mother.

Lythia Bouie answered the phone at almost 11 p.m., and for a moment, she thought her wisecracking youngest boy was joking. But she heard something terrible in her son’s voice, something in the way he said “Momma.”

More than three months later, she could still barely talk about it.

Couvson, just 20 years old, said he told her that night, “My leg is gone.”

He had been riding his motorcycle to pick up food on the way home from work Jan. 7. As Couvson was making a left turn from the Business 80 offramp just east of Harvard Street onto Arden Way, someone driving a car blew through a red light and smashed into Couvson. The driver sped off. Couvson never lost consciousness, and he remembered everything, lying on the street.

His leg didn’t hurt, exactly, but it felt like it was on fire.

The police report says they found Couvson around 11 p.m. He was on the ground by the offramp. A passerby had seen a car speed away from the scene, then pulled over and called 911 when he saw Couvson. The witness told police he thought the driver was going 60 mph — maybe even faster.

The Sacramento Police Department report says investigators found 40 yards of fresh tire marks on Arden heading west through the area of impact.

The crash was preceded by a series of mundane decisions. Couvson agreed to work 2:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. that Sunday — not his usual shift. He rode his motorcycle — not his usual mode of transportation at night. When he got off work, he was hungry. He headed toward the In-N-Out on Alta Arden Expressway.

Now, as he struggles to make ends meet on a meager Employment Development Department Disability Insurance payment that’s less than a quarter of his previous wages, as he recovers from his injuries and frequently wakes up from nightmares gasping for breath, he keeps asking himself, “What if?”

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