------------------------------------ people ----------------------------------------- When freshman Corey Dejarnett was a junior in high school, he was riding in the passenger seat of his friend's car going about 90 mph on a winding country road when the car skidded sideways into an on-coming pickup truck. The car flipped over and over for 50 or 60 yards. Dejarnett smashed into the windshield until the air bag jerked him back into his seat. The car slammed into a tree, causing the car to roll, and ejected Dejarnett out the side window. Once he hit the ground, there was nothing left to do except bleed to death. When the paramedics arrived on the scene they hooked him up to an oxygen machine. However, it was too late. Dejarnett had lost so much blood that he had no pulse. The paramedics pronounced him dead and telephoned Dejarnett's father to teUhim the horrific news. Suddenly Dejarnett stopped bleeding, and when the paramedics checked his pulse again, he was alive. Dejarnett was rushed to the hospital for "I don't really remember further treatment. He woke up hours later during a CAT scan. "I don't really remember waking up in the hospital. 1just know what people told me about it," Dejarnett said. "I don't remember much of anything right after the wreck" After more than 100 stitches in his head, treatment for whiplash and two sprained ankles, he left the hospital on his own will. "I had to talk my parents into letting me go home," he said. "I just didn't want to stay in the hospital any longer." The accident turned Dejarnett's whole world upside down. "I used to be a big partier, like the stereotypical high school football player, until God used my wreck to open my eyes to all the stupid stuff 1had done," Dejarnett - freshman said. "I thought if I had died, I didn't really show anything that let other people know Corey DeJarnett I was a Christian. 1went to church, but [my friends] always knew that I would be at the parties on Friday and Saturday nights." waking up in the hospital. 1don't remember much of anything right after the wreck." Because his eyes were opened, he fina ll y saw the direction in which God was pointing him. NI just thought about how Cod had a plan for me because he spared me, so I started to get involved in church and even became a leader in my youth group," Dejarnett said. Even with his new lUlderstanding, Dejarnett still wasn't exactly sure what God had in store for him. "A year before my wreck a friend of mine was killed from a less serious wreck than I had," Dejarnett said. "I just asked God why he decided to let me live." Dejarnett's accident and survival had also left its mark on his peers in high school. "A lot of people cleaned up their lives and it seemed like the outlook of the whole school changed," Dejarnett said. Dejarnett said he wanted to share God's grace after the accident. "I realized 1needed to talk to more people about God's grace because with the amolUlt of blood 1lost, 1shouldn't have made it," Dejarnett said. "It was only by his grace 1survived." ByJI&O~ON Oscar Smith, sopho– more Arielle Cox and freshman Corey DeJarnett talk in the student center. As a junior in high school, DeJarnett was in a car accident that almost took his life. (Photo by Amy Beene) freshmen 11 99
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