‘God sent them there.’ Harris County father, son help man see family again before death
For 19 hours, Eric Tindall was missing — trapped, alone and upside down in his flipped car.
At sunrise June 24, he was on his way to work as a welder at Mando, an auto parts supplier in Hogansville. Eric swerved to avoid a head-on collision with a vehicle that crossed the center line on a rural Harris County road. He overcorrected and crashed into the woods.
There’s no public evidence the other vehicle stopped to check on Eric or report the accident. Nobody else was around to call 911.
Eric couldn’t reach his cellphone. His family and sheriff deputies searched to no avail.
Six days later, Eric, 34, died in a Columbus hospital. But the Fort Benning soldier and son who found him, responding to a Facebook plea for help, gave his fiancée a gift: hearing him explain why he was missing — and hearing him say, one last time, “I love you.”
‘I was nervous’
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Joe Musolino, 40, is a cavalry scout. His 13-year-old son, Lorenzo, is a rising eighth-grader at Harris County Carver Middle School.
Around 1 a.m. June 25, Joe was about to go to sleep when he saw on a neighborhood watch page an urgent Facebook post from Keaton Fuller, a cousin of Eric’s fiancée, Lindsey Farmer:
“We have a family member who has been missing since 6:30 this morning. His name is Eric Tindall. He got dressed for work this morning to head to hogansville and kissed his fiancé and kids goodbye. His work friend informed us at 6:00pm that he was a ‘no call, no show’ Eric has never done this before. His phone has been off all day. He takes pleasant Valley road in Hamilton to get to 85 north to go to work! He was driving a black 2007 Hyundai TiBuron … If you see any sign of a wreck or see this vehicle or him! Please let Harris county police department know!”
Keaton’s message included Eric’s tag number.
Joe, who has been living in Harris County for only one year, didn’t know Keaton typed the road’s name wrong, but he figured from Google maps that she must have been referring to Hamilton Pleasant Grove Road. Joe also thought, if Eric was in an unreported single-car wreck and still missing, it probably happened in a wooded area where it would be hard to find him.
“Just knowing that there was someone that (could have been) trapped out there that needed help,” he said, “… at that particular time, there was nothing that I was doing that was more important.”
Lorenzo joined his dad in the search.
“I was nervous about what would happen if we found him,” Lorenzo said, “or what would happen if we didn’t find him.”
His dad, however, was confident in Lorenzo.
“He’s someone I can rely on pretty good,” Joe said. “… I always try to teach him to do something positive in the community, and this is the first place (out of six Army posts in a 17-year career) we’ve lived as a family where we’re making friends.”
‘Started freaking out’
They hopped in Joe’s pickup truck and headed for Hamilton Pleasant Grove Road’s curvy section near the bridge across Mountain Creek. The rain made it harder to see in the darkness.
During their third pass through that section, Joe drove south at 5 mph around the first curve north of the bridge. The beam from Lorenzo’s flashlight reflected off some metal amid overgrown bushes and fallen trees along an embankment about 15 yards from the right side of the road.
“I started freaking out,” Lorenzo said.
It was 1:20 a.m.
They saw an upside-down car that matched Keaton’s description.
“The vehicle was totally dead,” Joe said.
But the driver was very much alive.
‘Help me’
Joe walked over the embankment and down to the car as he called 911.
He heard Eric softly say, “Help me. Help me.”
Eric still was in the driver’s seat with the seat belt fastened.
“There was no movement whatsoever in his body, but he was totally alert,” Joe said. “… The driver’s side was kind of crushed. There was no way I could get into that door.”
Lorenzo said Eric was “so happy to see us.. . . . He was probably sad being in a flipped car for (19) hours and hearing all those cars go by without any of them stopping.”
While they waited for the ambulance, Joe further analyzed the situation. Eric’s cellphone was on the inside of the roof in the upside-down car. It still was powered on and within Eric’s reach — a sign Eric might be paralyzed.
Joe couldn’t recall Eric telling him how the wreck happened, but a clear impression remains: “He wasn’t angry. You could tell his character, how he seemed like a very friendly person.”
About 10 minutes after the 911 call, two sheriff’s deputy SUVs arrived, then the paramedics a few minutes later.
The Ledger-Enquirer didn’t reach anyone at the sheriff’s office for comment about the wreck and rescue, but Joe recalled one of the deputies told him, “We looked up and down this road several times.”
As they watched Eric be placed into the ambulance, Joe told Lorenzo, “You did a good thing.”
Thinking about Eric, Lorenzo said, “I felt happy for his family and happy for him that he was alive and he was going to make it that day and he was able to hold on to what he loves: his family and just life.”
Keaton considers Joe and Lorenzo heroes.
“They are two of the bravest people I’ve ever met,” she said. “… It was storming and raining, so that man and that son did not have to go out and do that. But something in their hearts told them. God sent them there.”
‘Perfect for each other’
Lindsey and Eric met six years ago, when Eric was a customer at the Woodbury restaurant where Lindsey worked.
“They’ve been inseparable since then,” said Keaton, a certified medical assistant at Elite Family Medicine in Brookstone Centre, where Lindsey is a receptionist. “… Our whole family has never met a couple that was more perfect for each other, that found each other at the right time, that loved each other so much.”
Eric, Lindsey and their two sons lived with Lindsey’s mother and stepfather in Waverly Hall to save money before their wedding.
According to the Google account on Eric’s cellphone, Keaton said, he left home June 24 at 6:12 a.m. and reached the Chevron gas station in Hamilton at 6:28 a.m.
“That was the last time his phone was pinged,” she said.
While they walked during their lunch break, Lindsey told Keaton she was worried she hadn’t heard from Eric yet that day. He didn’t answer her several calls.
Then, when he wasn’t home by that evening, Lindsey and Keaton called area law enforcement offices and hospitals. No trace of Eric.
“We couldn’t report him missing until after 72 hours,” Keaton said. “But if he was stuck in a vehicle, he would have been dead after 72 hours.”
‘So frustrating’
Legal reasons prevented AT&T and the sheriff’s office from tracking Eric’s phone, Keaton said she was told.
“It was so frustrating,” she said. “I mean, we tried every password and username combination we could think of to try to get into his account.”
Around 9 p.m., Lindsey, Keaton and a friend drove Eric’s route to work. They passed a sheriff’s deputy who promised they would search until they found him, Keaton said.
After they returned home around 11 p.m., Keaton sent her desperate request on Facebook.
“We did nothing but pray over and over and over again,” she said. “… It had almost 300 shares within an hour and a half. It was just amazing how the community came together.”
When the officer called to tell the family Eric was found, his injuries were unknown, Keaton said, but “all we cared about was that he was alive.”
‘All the hope in the world’
That morning at Piedmont Columbus Regional’s midtown hospital, Eric had surgery to insert a rod in his back.
“His spine was broken at the very top, by the neck,” Keaton said.
Eric was paralyzed from the waist down, but the prognosis indicated he could regain use of his arms and hands.
“We had all the hope in the world that he was going to be OK,” Keaton said. “We were all coming together and making plans to build wheelchair ramps and a chairlift to get upstairs.”
Eric explained the wreck to Lindsey this way, Keaton said: A burgundy truck or SUV crossed the center line and forced him off the road. He overcorrected and crashed on the other side.
The last time Lindsey and Eric spoke to each other was June 29.
“He told me he loves me over and over,” Keaton recalled Lindsey saying.
The morning of June 30, Eric was scheduled for surgery to remove a blood clot. But he coded.
“He was gone for 8-10 minutes,” Keaton said. “… They were able to bring him back and get his heart started, but he had no brain activity.”
That evening, a call from the hospital informed the family that Eric quickly was declining.
COVID-19 precautions required the seven relatives who went to the hospital to get their temperatures taken before they could enter. After they got through the line, they ran through the hallways.
“By the time we made it up to his room, he was still hooked up to the ventilator, but he was already gone,” Keaton said. “… He fought for six days. He didn’t want to give up, but his body gave up.”
Keaton is grateful for the solace of knowing Lindsey had that explanation and final moment with Eric because of the rescue.
“I give everything to Joe and them for finding him,” Keaton said. “… I think Lindsey would have taken it a lot harder if she wasn’t able to have that validation and those last words with him, to say I love you.”
HOW TO HELP
An account at GoFundMe.com has been established to help Eric Tindall’s family pay for his medical and funeral expenses.
“I just want people to keep Lindsey and her boys in their prayers,” Keaton said. “He was a great father figure and a great man. He loved his family more than anything in the world.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
