Senior Trooper Edward D. Brown, Jr.
On the afternoon of October 4, 2010, just 30 minutes before the end of his shift and the start of a long-awaited hunting trip with his uncle, Trooper Edward Brown, Jr. was investigating an accident in the northbound lanes of Interstate-95 in Prince William County. As Dwayne was walking back to his car, a tractor-trailer with defective brakes slammed into a northbound car, which careened towards Dwayne and his patrol car. With only a split-second to react before the impact, he jumped up, probably saving himself from being crushed between the cars. Even so, the force of the hit catapulted him face-first into the car’s windshield and out onto the pavement.
Coming to while laying on I-95, Dwayne realized he was seriously hurt when he spit and a couple of his teeth flicked out. In and out of consciousness, he didn’t immediately grasp the full extent his injuries—a broken jaw, the loss of four teeth, and a gaping wound the size of his hand on his right leg. Medevaced to INOVA Fairfax Hospital, he eventually would undergo at least four surgeries to repair his broken jaw and replace his lost teeth.
The gravity of the accident hit Dwayne a few days afterwards when he was resting at his in-laws’ home. Dwayne recalled that he broke down thinking of what might have been. “I realized I had almost been killed and that I was very fortunate to hold my wife and son again and that I would live to hold my baby girl when she was born. We had learned only days before this happened that my wife was pregnant.”
Despite missing four of his front teeth, Dwayne was back on light duty in the office by early December and returned to full duty by May 2011, eight months after the accident. Since then he has “continued to be just the kind of trooper he was before his injuries,” according to Lieutenant James De Ford, Sr. “He’s a fine young man with fine moral character. He’s hard-working and has a positive attitude.”
Dwayne is among a select few of troopers asked to be a field training officer, in which he observes trainees in action, both to continue their training and to assess their readiness for the job. “There’s a lot of responsibility involved in being a field training officer,” said Lieutenant De Ford. “To a certain extent they hold the trainee’s future in their hands.” Dwayne handled this task and others so well that in August 2012 he was promoted to Senior Trooper.
Undeterred by the challenges he faced in the aftermath of the accident, Dwayne is just happy to be on the job. “I have a great job and I’m lucky to be doing something I love. As the years have gone by I’ve been offered a lot of opportunities I never would have been afforded otherwise and I’ve been able to meet a lot of great people. There’s nothing else I would want to do.”