Here are 16 accounts of people who did the unthinkable. Some of them accidentally caused the loss of a life through tragic accidents. Others acted in defense of their own life. Some even carry the burden through indirect actions. Each person was forever changed. Let their accounts serve as a reminder of the importance of human lives and to value each and every day.
The Babysitter
‘When I was 12, I was babysitting for a family in my subdivision. There were two little girls (3 and 6) and a 5-month-old baby. I had experience babysitting, but wasn’t great with babies. I was real nervous and not the most responsible/adult kid anyway. The girls were sitting on the living room floor reading, and the baby started crying from her crib. I picked her up and took her into the kitchen to warm up her milk bottle in the microwave. I simply dropped her. I have been over this 1,000 times in my head and there is no other way I can explain it. I just dropped her.
The weirdest part is how calm I felt, like I turned into a robot. I told the girls to go to the basement immediately and called my dad and told him what happened. Then I sat at the kitchen table for 10 minutes while he came over. Obviously nothing could be done, but he took care of everything.
I was not charged because it was ruled an accidental death. There was a chance I could have been charged with criminally negligent manslaughter but was not, in part because of my age.
They family was very kind to me. We did not talk much about it afterwards. The mother came up to me at the wake and gave me a hug and said she didn’t blame me. The thing I remember most is a newspaper article in my hometown paper where the dad called it a ‘terrible accident.’ That stuck with me, just the fact that he said that to the community. They moved when I was 13 and I have not been in touch with them. The only thing I noticed in the community was that I was not asked to babysit again … it sounds obvious, but it was really hard because I did it a lot.at that point and was really proud of having taken CPR class.
This was several decades ago and I still feel it every day. I am a woman and do not think I can ever have children because of it. The family moved but until they did, I had to throw up every time I drove past their house or saw one of them in the community’
Desperate Act
‘I do apologize if I sound clinical, but it’s how I get through it.
I was tending bar, and one of the customers was hitting on me. Pretty typical Friday night. But this guy was off. First off, he was coming on super strong, like, most guys would flirt, I’d bring them their drinks, and they’d go into their little cliques and leave me alone. This guy came in alone and was aggressively, almost violently hitting on me. He was also just, in some way I still cannot quantify, fundamentally off. He seemed like the type of guy animals would avoid for seemingly no reason.
Anyway, I make sure the patrons are topped off before I go out for a smoke break. About five minutes later, the creepy guy comes out, and I’m about to tell him that it’s employees only back there. He gets aggressive and forceful. I pull a knife out of my boot and all of a sudden it is done.
My clothes were dirty. I call one of the regulars on my cell, and he comes out. One of his biker buddies throws his coat around me, and his girlfriend, for some reason, had a change of clothes, so I changed into them while someone called the cops. This girl was a lot smaller (I’m 6’1″) and I remember feeling worried about how ridiculous I would look for the cops.
I was found to be acting in self-defense. I am still super glad the manager installed CCTV cameras that caught the whole thing. I honestly believe that’s what saved the case.
How I felt about it. That’s a difficult question. I regret that he put me into a position where I felt that I had to kill him. I do not, in any sense of the word, regret killing him. I certainly didn’t enjoy it, but placed in the same circumstances a thousand times, I would do it a thousand times more’
In the Line of Duty
“USMC combat vet here. It’s kinda like the video games. Not the ones where they get pushed backwards, it looks like they just trip or instantly faint.
Then you laugh and make inappropriate jokes. Then you cry when you try to go to sleep. Then you wake up a joke about it the next day. Then you do it again and the cycle repeats until you get out the military, when you are no longer around friends you can talk to and joke around with. So the pressure without the relief of comedy builds up. Then everyone asks you, ‘So did you kill anyone over there?’ Then you just want to kill them. Then you imagine doing what you’ve done to that person. Then you’re like, ‘Ohh, nah, I just masturbated a lot when I was there’
And then they stab you in the chest by saying, ‘Thank you for your service'”
Craigslist Killer
‘Didn’t happen to me, but my BIL;
He was meeting someone from a craigslist add for some Macs. They met in some building downtown in the stairwell. The guy suddenly pulls a gun on him trying to mug him for his money. BIL was able to pin the guys arm on the wall but he wouldn’t drop the gun. All of this was captured on camera thankfully, and you can see him struggling to get gun to drop. After bashing him against a wall for 2 minutes, he somehow manages to pick the guy up and launches him down a set of stairs head first. He died the next day.’
3 AM
‘It was actually two guys (home invasion), but I shot both of them.
It was about 3am but I was still up trying to get some work done for the next day. I heard the sound of broken glass hitting the wooden floor and my living room and knew something was wrong immediately. My girlfriend and my dog were both asleep in the room with my and my niece and nephew were asleep in the room across the hall (I was watching them for the weekend). I woke my girlfriend quietly and told her to stay quiet and call 911. I had my carry gun still on me from earlier that day but I decided to grab my rifle. I could hear the crunch of the broken glass under the feet of the guys downstairs. Had it just been my girlfriend and me in the house at the time I would’ve stayed put in the bedroom but with my niece and nephew across the hall I didn’t want anyone coming upstairs. I positioned myself at the top of the stairs and stayed quiet, hoping they’d just take my tv and games consoles from the living room and leave.
After about a minute or two both of them moved into the downstairs hallway and started heading towards the stairs. I stood up to where they could see me, pointed my rifle at them and yelled at them to get the f–k out of my house. Before I even finished saying it one of them raised his pistol and started shooting at me. I didn’t see him draw so he must’ve had it in his hand and I didn’t notice it. I returned fire and hit both of them several times. Once both guys were down I just kept my rifle on them and didn’t move. I fired repeatedly, they fired repeatedly. I didn’t get hit. They did. The police arrived about 10 minutes later, when I saw the lights outside I lowered my rifle, cleared it and leaned it against the wall. I also took off my carry gun and left it beside my rifle.
I don’t regret what I did in the least. I do look back at it though and think about how I made some stupid mistakes though. I should’ve noticed the guy had a gun in his hand immediately and I should’ve been quicker on the trigger. I let them get the first shot off. If I’d been hit things could’ve gone very differently’
The Learner
‘When I was 17, I still only had my learner’s permit to drive. I was driving back from a doctor’s appointment with my mom. It was already completely dark out (about 9:30), but I was doing everything right. I had my lights on, turned off the radio, was doing the speed limit, and was not talking on my cell phone or anything. Seemingly, out of nowhere, a young boy ran out into the street. I slammed on my breaks as hard as I could, but I had already hit him. I was in shock. The first thing I did was pull over, put the car in park, and got out of the car. I see all the cars around me stopped and everything was still. I didn’t know what to do. My legs wouldn’t work and the only thing I could do was cry and scream.
A man tried resuscitate him. Within minutes, ambulances and police cars were everywhere. All the commotion wasn’t even the worst part. That was his father who was devastated. I was shaking violently and couldn’t really keep myself together. The police told me to wait in the car with my mom while they tried to make it all okay. All I could think of was, ‘Please don’t be, please don’t be.’ I soon learned that the ambulance drove him to a nearby high school where a helicopter flew him to the hospital. I learned the next day that he died on the way there. His name was Elijah and he was only 9 years old. Two years younger than my brother.
I was VERY fortunate to not be charged with anything and I had no points on my license (when I got it). I never spoke with the father, but had read in the paper that he lost his wife just 3 months prior to my accident. I felt like the worst person in the world. I hated myself; I could barely sleep, I didn’t want to eat, and I couldn’t smile for weeks. About a month later, my mom and I were driving to the same doctor that I had been leaving on the day of the accident. The road on which the accident happened was unavoidable, and I saw his vigil on the side of the road. He was such a normal kid, he liked football and cartoons, and he was very smart.
It took a long time for me to stop blaming myself and accept the fact that it was an unfortunate fluke. This happened about four years ago and I still think of it from time to time. I still feel guilty and it’s a dark part of my past that I don’t like to talk about.
But a few years ago, during the summer, I was at the beach with my family and I was sitting in the water when a little boy (about 2-3 years old) came up to me. He said hi and start splashing me. When I realized he wasn’t with anyone, I got scared that he was lost. Just then, a woman came running over, shouting, ‘Elijah, Elijah! Oh, thank God, you found my son! Thank you!’ She picked him up and he waved goodbye to me as she walked away. I get the chills every time I tell that story’
Best Friends
‘I was 16 at time, I am now in my 60’s. I had a good friend that I had known since grade 5, for sake of the story; we will call him John.
John and I were best friends, we did everything together and for the most part – we were pretty good kids. Sure we teepeed the neighbour’s house once, and did some stupid stuff kids so like light a mailbox on fire and give the neighbour’s dog stool softener. But nothing too horrible.
One summer John went to his cottage which he normally did each summer for a few weeks during the school break. He came back after and was pretty distraught, we drifted a bit apart and during the next few weeks; we didn’t talk much, didn’t ‘click’ for a lack of a better term, he was depressed and started to be withdrawn from our group of friends.
One day after the school year had started in September, he came to me during the lunch period and asked to talk to me, he told me that during his trip to his cottage the past summer, his step-dad had molested him several times and beaten his mom. I tried to comfort him and console him, I asked if his mom went to the police, or if he told anybody else (including his mother) about being molested. He said no to both.
He then went on to tell me about how he wanted to kill his step-dad, I didn’t think he was serious so I joked with him about all these ways to do it. Like burning him, poisoning, etc… He told me that he wasn’t joking and he was going to do it, and asked me to help him. I agreed to, to this day I don’t know why I agreed, perhaps because I felt bad or because I missed how we used to be close. Anyways, a week later after school he told me how his step-dad molested him again the night before, and how we were going to do it today.
By the time we went over to his house, his step-dad was already intoxicated and passed out on the couch, his mom worked the evening shift and has just left for work. We went to the kitchen to get a snack, he handed me a knife and told me the plan. He was going to hold his step dad down, and then I was going to use the knife. Needless to say, the plan didn’t go as planned.
See, two 16 year old aren’t that strong, certainly not enough to hold down a drunk middle aged violent man. When John grabbed him he threw him into a wall and then he came after me. I ran, oh f–k I ran. I remember running up the stairs to his room as fast as I could We both tumbled down to the bottom of the stairs and I accidentally stabbed him. He fell over in a heap while cursing me. I ran over, told John what happened as he was still sitting by the wall he was thrown against crying and we ran out of the house.
We came home a few hours later, figuring we’re going to be in a lot of trouble and we should just apologies to him and take out beatings. But when we got in the house, we saw him laying on the ground and he was gone.
John looked at me and began crying, telling me that I killed him, I explained it was an accident I didn’t mean too, but he was the one who wanted to kill him.
We sat in the living room watching cartoons, not saying a word to each other as we waited for his mother to get home. Things were different back then, we lived in a small ‘country’ town, so calling the police didn’t even cross our minds.
Anyways, I digress. His mother came home, saw what happened and called the Sheriff. They came to take away his body and to talk about what happened.
We ended up going to court over it, he was dismissed because I was deemed at fault, his mother never mentioned the beatings, John never mentioned the molestation. I was all alone and in trouble. I went to jail, I was in there for six years before his mother came out about the beatings, and John confessed to what his stepdad had done and how I killed him in self-defense. I was discharged from jail and released.
I moved away from my home town to New York state where I live today. I don’t know what happened to John, or his mom. I am thankful that he and her had came out to tell the truth, but it took far to long. For that, I could never forgive him’
Sheer Luck
“Was with my girlfriend in Chicago at Navy Pier. It was my first time in Chicago. We stayed at Navy Pier until evening then walked back to the car. I had just bought a brand new ’06 Impala. A guy shoved me into the car and as I spun around he pushed a gun at me. I’ve had a few self defense classes and did some karate in middle school. I grabbed for the gun and put my finger behind the trigger so it couldn’t be pulled and as the guy was struggling to get it away from me I had overpowered him and we had our chests together fighting for position. I knew the gun was pointed away and the guy went for my face, I let go of the hand holding the trigger and the gun went off. I was mostly stunned after that happened thinking I was hit, my girlfriend was in the car with the doors locked and had called the police… they showed up about 2 minutes after the gunshot. Felt like a lifetime. Police took my statement and the statement of my girlfriend. It was determined self defense. I actually didn’t tell anyone in my family about it until last year.
I don’t want it to sound as if I did all that on purpose like I’m Stephen Segal or anything, it was by sheer luck that I turned and grabbed the gun with my finger behind the trigger, and when he pulled away my hand slipped but the gun was turned in my hand and pointed at him. It was by sheer luck and coincidence that I wasn’t dead”
He Saved His Mom
‘When I was 8 years old we lived out in a farm house in an orchard, the nearest ‘town’ was about ten minutes away and my dad was working far enough away that he stayed away during the week. One morning I heard my mom yelling and I thought I had missed the bus so I got out of bed and saw a man hitting her and trying to grab her, he was out in a bender and had just walked to the nearest lights and broken in. Our dog was barking and nipping at him but she wasn’t a trained attack dog or anything. I ran back into my room and grabbed a little .22 bolt action my dad had given me and the ammo he made me keep separate and loaded it. It seemed like it took forever to load those 5 shots. I ran outside following the dog barking and saw him dragging my mom. I remember trying to be steady like I had been taught but I just fired over and over again, I didn’t know it at the time but 3 of the 5 hit him and he was later found by the police after someone dropped him anonymously at a hospital about an hour away. He didn’t make it.
At that age I had a hard time processing it mainly because the state mandated I see a counselor and she kept insinuating I should feel all kinds of emotions I wasn’t, which made me feel like there was something wrong with me. In the end I just feel lucky that I was brought up by parents who trusted me and spent time teaching me never to panic’ Source.
He Broke The Bat
‘My senior year of college, I had an off campus apartment in a really s—-y part of town. I often went to the batting cages with my roommates just for fun, so we each had our own baseball bat.
It was a Friday night and I heard a bang at the backdoor. I honestly thought it was just one of my roommates who had locked themselves out drunkenly. Well I get down there and there’s a guy in the kitchen wearing a ski mask. I just grabbed one of the baseball bats and swung at this guy.
He fell back, broke down the sliding closet door. Two of my roommates came running out, and I was just standing over this guy, who was on the floor. One called 911 and the other one took off the guys ski mask and we tried to help him. At this point the lights were still off and I didn’t actually realize how much damage was done.
Two cops show up what felt like an eternity later, and then an ambulance wheeled him off. He died not too long after that. Our last roommate showed up while police were still taking statements. He just walks in and gives us this look like ‘What the hell happened?’ And I just said ‘I broke your bat, I’m sorry.’ He didn’t really give a s–t about the baseball bat, I just didn’t know what else to say.
None of us slept that night. We just watched south park on Netflix and all called out of work the next day. I remember there was a lot of disbelief. I mean I couldn’t believe that had just happened. Never felt bad about it though. I did often wonder for awhile what led that guy to break into our place.
I do however own a .22 revolver now’
Act of Mercy
“My old man was slowly succumbing to pulmonary fibrosis last year. It got to the point where he had to be hospitalized because he couldn’t get enough air from his at home machine. He was in the hospital for 17 days, heavily medicated on morphine and atavan. Towards the end, after we found him blue on the floor from pulling his IVs and oxygen mask off, or sitting there and listening to him ask me: ‘Am I going to be okay?’ I told his doctor he wouldn’t want this, they said okay and he passed away that night.
As far as how I felt about it, it was the single saddest and most relieving moment in my life. That f—er was my best friend and my father. But after watching him slowly suffocate to death for 9 months, being his sole caretaker and working my own job at 50-60 hours a week it was a weight off my shoulders and he didn’t have to suffer anymore”
“Even now, decades later..”
‘Back in 1995 I lived in a quiet neighborhood in the SF East Bay with my wife of a few years and our 20 month old daughter. We had a small 3 bedroom two story house, and one of our second floor bedrooms doubled as my home office. One quiet Saturday morning I was in my office playing Command and Conquer on my computer with my headphones on, oblivious to the sounds of the outside world.
I’d probably been playing for an hour or so when, during one particularly quiet moment, I faintly heard my wife cry out downstairs. Knowing that she was down there with our daughter, I pulled my headphones off to see if she needed help with anything. Until the day I take my last breath, I’ll never forget what I heard when I pulled them off. I heard the voice of a man, with a thick Mexican accent, shout, ‘Quit yelling b—h or I’ll hurt you!’ My daughter was crying hysterically.
After that, it was like some switch was thrown in me and my higher brain just shut off. I wasn’t making decisions. I just acted. I don’t even remember pulling the .45 from the lockbox in my desk, I just remember walking down the stairs slowly, scared as hell that I was going to see my wife dead. Instead, when I reached the bottom, I saw my wife being violated.
I never said a word to the guy. Not while I was upstairs, not while I was coming down the stairs, and not when I walked into the room. His back was to me, so he had no idea I was even standing there. I used my gun, repeatedly.
What happened next has always been a point of shame for me. The only thought going through my head at that point was that I couldn’t let my daughter watch this. Without even checking on my wife, I scooped my daughter up and walked out my front door. As I walked out to my driveway, I saw one of my neighbors standing there staring at my house (he’d heard the gunshots). The poor guy went pale when he saw me walk out, and I vaguely remember asking him to hold my daughter while I went and checked on my wife. The neighbor asked me if I’d shot her, and I told him, ‘No, I shot the man who hurt her.’ I then handed him my daughter and my gun (I also have no idea why I gave him my gun), and went back into my house to help my wife.
The police and DA gave me some flak about the exact circumstances of the shooting (one of the detectives told me that it was more of an ‘execution’ than a ‘defense’), but in the end they declined to pursue any charges. The man who attacked her turned out to be a guy with serious mental issues who had committed other violent acts.
As for recovery; I like to think that I’ve recovered from it, but it certainly induced a few behavioral changes. To this day, for example, I can’t wear headphones that block out background noise. Even after years of counseling, over-ear and noise cancelling headphones give me panic attacks because I can’t hear what’s happening around me. I was sitting 30 feet away and had no idea it was going on, and that fact has f—ed with me for years.
My wife had a much worse time of it though. In addition to physical wounds, she ended up needing years to be herself again. For the first 6 months, she absolutely could not be in any room by herself. For more than a year, she couldn’t be in a house by herself (and she NEVER reentered the house where this happened). For several years, she’d break out in a sweat when she heard men with deep hispanic accents talking, because she’d hear his voice again. Even now, decades later, she can’t talk about it. She’s fine in every other sense, but even discussing it freaks her out’
Almost Him
“Didn’t kill anyone but I was pretty close to it. I was very volatile in my teenage years – I’ve been bullied for years and my situation at home wasn’t that good either. I was generally a chill person, but disrespect and antagonizing could send me over the edge.
This one time, a fool of a classmate insulted me on a very deep and personal level and he has been antagonizing me for hours before that day. I simply lost it. I stood up and pushed him into the table, grabbing his throat, groaning like a mad animal. I tore his shirt and his neck was all red. It took three people to get me off of him. I barely held back – if I didn’t I would have used the switchblade in my pocket”
Words Like A Knife
“Not directly, but there was a girl back in the day that things went REALLY south with during very short relationship. Things were great for about a week and then a switch flipped and, to this day I’ve never had someone attempt to be so controlling, emotionally manipulative, and spiteful.
In the end, during our breakup, I preemptively went straight for the figurative jugular and launched every insult at every insecurity I’d learned about in the short couple of months that we’d dated.
I ended with the cringe worthy attack that went something like ‘And if you were to go kill yourself, no one would miss you…even your s—y mom would be glad to be rid of the emotional wreck and burden you are to everyone around you.’ Yeah…I was a real schmuck.
It’s stuck with me almost 20 years later because within a few days, she did kill herself. In her suicide note, among other things, she mentioned me, the things I’d said, how it blindsided her because she loved me, and was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
Her mother called me and was an emotional wreck. She told me about the note and blamed me for her daughter’s death…that I was her daughter’s last hope in the world and I’d ripped her away. She threatened to find me and kill me, but she was probably so blown out on whatever drug she was drowning herself in that I didn’t take it seriously.
It took years for me to realize that her life was likely the reason she treated me the way she did. It was probably all she ever saw between her drug addled mom and the constant revolving door of dudes she watched her mom date.
We’d originally connected over the fact that our mom’s shared a history with drugs, but I grew up in a family where other family members stepped in and I had stability that she didn’t.
I shouldn’t have said half the things I said and, if it were me now, I’d have just ended things and walked away”
The Good Old Days
‘Not me, but my dad. It was 1977, his best friend was riding in the back of his truck. He was 17 or so. They were driving through the downtown area of Richmond. They hit a bump in the road and my dad’s friend bounced out. He broke his neck. Dad held him while he passed. They were best friends and he felt responsible.’
The Hitchhiker
“I was 16 and driving to my job at a ski resort when a homeless looking guy on the side of the road tried to flag me down. It was the middle of nowhere and still dark out. He had a beard, and looked really dirty. I didn’t stop. Later I found out the guy had been lost in the woods for a week, he died on the side of the road an hour or so after I saw him. Granted, multiple people drove past him, and no one stopped to see if he needed help until he passed out”