“How many fatal crashes do you think I have seen out of that six hundred [DUI-related crashes],” PA State Trooper Ross Greenwood asked. “Fifty-two. I had to go knock on fifty-two families’ doors and tell them that their loved one wasn’t coming home. Out of those fifty-two, one of them was my best friend.”

Trooper Ross Greenwood, husband to North Penn math teacher, Chrissy Greenwood, came to speak to seniors last week in the DUI follow-up assembly. A big part of his message was his experiences in having to inform families that loved ones were not coming home from car crashes, one being his best friend. During this time of year, as the weather warms and prom season comes around, students need to be reminded of the risks of driving under the influence. The assembly is an emotional time and is meant to leave seniors with a reminder that driving under the influence is never acceptable. The silence of the audience members made it clear that Greenwood left a lasting impact.

Throughout the assembly, he reminisced and retold the story of the death of his best friend, Trooper Branden Sisca. The tragedy took place on March 21, 2022.

“I was with this guy every second of my life. Hanging out after school, hanging out in college, hanging out as a firefighter, and then he became a state trooper with me. I saw him everywhere. How do you lose somebody like that? How does it feel when you see someone everyday and you talk to them every day? They know your deepest secrets, they know what you are going to say before you even say it. We are not even brothers. We don’t have the same mom or dad, but we acted like it. We never ever were apart from each other,” Greenwood detailed.

Losing his best friend was hard and the memory of the day will live with Greenwood forever.

“I don’t know if you believe in weird miracles or things that you think about, but on that night, I was in the zone of a highway car. At eleven o’clock when I went in for shift, I changed my zone with my other partners and I was in a county car which is the furthest car from the highway. Ironically, if I was in that highway car, I would have been first on the scene of this incident. But I wasn’t. It’s weird,” Greenwood said.

Weird superstitions held Greenwood from being first on the crash scene, but the radio was letting him gain knowledge about what was going on.

“Me and my partner go out in the county car on a traffic stop. We were hearing a lot of radio traffic and sometimes our radios don’t work, but that traffic turned into yelling, screams, troopers asking for help. We had to go. We had no idea what was going on. All we knew was that troopers needed help and we didn’t know what was going on,” Greenwood recalled.

The radio traffic made Greenwood want to go assist the troopers in the accident, but his dispatcher made him stay in the county car furthest from the accident. Little did Greenwood know, the decision saved his career. The accident started with a traffic stop of a drunk driver.

“Trooper Branden pulled over a car Northbound at mile-marker twenty, just past the stadiums, where the Walt Whitman Bridge is, for a lady going one hundred miles an hour while weaving in and out of traffic. She almost caused crashes and was driving erratically to the point where it looked like it was a drunk driver. While Trooper Mack, [Branden’s partner], was walking up to the car, a dispatch came in saying a pedestrian was in the middle of the left lane right in front of Lincoln Financial,” Greenwood continued. “Before they even got up to the car they said ‘Ma’am slow down,’ got back into their car, and made a U-turn to get the pedestrian.”

Branden and his partner made their way to the pedestrian to get him out of the road. They gave the driver a verbal warning and left.

“They were in the left lane getting that pedestrian. As they were in front of the car, Trooper Sisca, my best friend, and Mack, his partner, were detaining the subject and placing him in the car. A car, driving in the left lane, at eighty miles an hour, struck all three of them and killed them instantly. Two troopers and a pedestrian. Their bodies were flown into the Northbound lane. The crash happened Southbound,” Greenwood explained. “You know what the worst part was. That car they pulled over three minutes ago was the same car that killed them. They had them right there. The same car they pulled over hit them all.”

How does this happen? Who was driving? All questions Greenwood would soon figure out.

“There’s no answer. So who’s driving? Twenty-one-year-old from our area where we currently live now, was out with a friend at Hookah Lounge drinking, smoking, and driving. The legal limit in Pennsylvania is a .08. She was a 2.32. She also had numerous amounts of Delta THC and marijuana.”

The driver’s actions made devastating changes to Greenwood and his everyday life.

“I saw Branden and Mack’s car were hit. Have you ever had that pit in your stomach that something’s wrong? I had it. I didn’t know they were dead. I didn’t know a crash happened or even if they were hurt. I had that feeling. At one-thirty in the morning I picked up my phone and the first person I called was my wife and I said, ‘Something bad happened to Brandon and I don’t know what,’” Greenwood said. “A couple minutes later, I went back to the station and was told that both of them were killed and I immediately sank to the floor and cried. I was sent home. I’m in the car for twenty-two minutes driving home and that was the worst feeling, alone. I didn’t know what just happened. For those twenty-two minutes, my head was racing about what could have possibly happened. How? How could somebody kill three people in a tenth of a second?”

Not only was Greenwood affected by the death of Sisca, but all of Sisca’s family was as well. It shows how one drunk driver can hurt many lives.

“At five-forty, I walked up to Britney, his wife’s, door and knocked. She answered and asked what I was doing there. And you know what I did? I froze. I froze. I could not get the words out of my mouth. I froze. Someone else had to tell her that her husband wasn’t coming home. My best friend wasn’t coming home. I did not have the courage to say that. I froze. She was also six months pregnant with her first child,” Greenwood said.

The Sisca family was changed forever because of a drunk driver. The impact will last forever and students should understand the consequences of their actions.

“This is real. This isn’t a game. This isn’t a life you want to have. You have two choices in life: you can be the person who changes the world in a good and positive way or you can be the other person who changes the world in a negative way and has a big impact in the worst way possible and that’s what this girl did. Twenty-one having a good time and she got behind the wheel. I don’t make this up,” Greenwood told students.

Greenwood left North Penn seniors visibly emotional but with a new perspective on the dangers of driving under the influence.