Sanitation worker who lost legs in crash wakes up from coma

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — A sanitation worker, who lost both his legs on the job, knows his life has changed forever.

Horace Walker is out of a coma after a car hit him earlier this month. His wife, Carla, told Channel 2’s Ross Cavitt that he learned this week that he lost his legs.

“I want you to understand that our family’s life is changed forever, you know. What could have been that important that my husband became pinned between a truck and your car? The biggest thing is I want to know why,” Carla Walker said.

Horace Walker had taken a job with a sanitation company only months earlier, because it provided better pay to support his wife and two kids.  He was throwing some garbage in the back of his truck on Austell Road when the driver of a Dodge, apparently distracted by something, rammed the rear of the truck, trapping Walker between the vehicles.

Since the day of the crash nearly two weeks ago, Carla Walker’s life has revolved around her husband’s hospital room in Grady Memorial Hospital’s ICU.  Horace Walker, a man in his early 50s built like someone two decades younger, only days ago came out of his drug-induced coma.

“He has looked at his limbs. He has touched them. Being the resilient man that he is, he’s just taking it in and taking it one day at a time,” she said.

It was touch and go for a while. Carla Walker told Cavitt her husband doted on their 3-year-old daughter, who can’t understand his absence.

“You see him close the door and walk away, and then a few hours later, you get a call saying your husband’s in critical condition in ICU at Grady. She doesn’t understand that. She just knows we dropped off Daddy, and we’re supposed to be going back to pick up Daddy,” Carla Walker said.

Horace Walker won’t be home for a while; His wife is focused on his recovery but can’t get past what happened.

“I’d like to know, the kids would like to know. This is daddy. This is a husband,” she said.

Cobb County police are continuing to investigate the crash. Officers say they expect to file charges, and have seized the driver's cellphone, but that driver has hired a lawyer and has yet to give a statement.

Carla Walker hopes the tragedy their family is facing will prompt others to look at their bad driving habits.

"A radio knob, a text, a phone, none of that is important. Just a split second has changed our family's life forever. So there's nothing that would ever be that important to be distracted from driving," she said.

WSBTV