Allen West speaks out after motorcycle crash leaves him hospitalized: 'I shouldn't be alive'
Former Florida Republican Rep. Allen West opens up on the 'hellish' Texas crash and his condition on 'The Brian Kilmeade Show.'
Lt. Col. Allen West said Tuesday he believes he's lucky to be alive after he was injured in a serious motorcycle accident in Texas this past weekend.
“The funny thing is, I crashed in a city called West, Texas, so how appropriate,” West told “The Brian Kilmeade Show," his first interview since the harrowing crash.
West, a former Florida congressman who is now a candidate to lead the Republican Party of Texas, was hospitalized Saturday after being injured in a motorcycle crash, according to reports. The accident occurred around 5 p.m. on the northbound side of Interstate 35 near mile marker 353 outside Waco, the Texas Department of Public Safety told KWTX-TV of Central Texas.
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West described to Kilmeade that while he was driving on I-35, he was suddenly clipped from the back by a vehicle.
“Someone cut me off and, of course, I slowed down when they cut me off,” West said. “I don’t know if it was another car or it was the guy on a motorcycle behind me, but they clipped my back wheel and I went flying. Thank God I didn’t get hit by another car or anything like that,” Kilmeade said.
West said that the accident “scraped him up” and he suffered a concussion, among several other injuries.
“I got bandages on both arms and lost a lot of skin there. Lost skin on my face, dislocated my shoulder and maybe had a slight fracture. I got a couple of bad lacerations in my right palm and across my left knee.”
West said that he never lost consciousness during the accident.
“I remember the bike going out from under me. I could feel it just slipping from the back and, as you’re taught, you let go of the bike, you don’t want to hang on to it. That could really cause the worst injury. I was in the air for a while and then hit the pavement and rolled around,” West said.
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“When I finally stopped, the first thing I did was wiggle my toes to let me know that everything was OK for my extremities. But, I tried to get up and that’s when I knew that something was messed up in my upper body because I couldn’t get up and move,” West said.
West said that the worst part was lying on the pavement after the crash.
“That was hellish,” West said, adding that he even joked with first responders about not recording him as a COVID-19 case.
He described being in the hospital and learning that President Trump had tweeted his well wishes.
"When you’re sitting there in the hospital and it was Sunday and my wife Angela’s there and she tells me that President Trump just tweeted best wishes and you just break out crying. And it’s hard to fight back the tears when you think about all the people that were praying for you. I just want to thank them, thank the staff at Baylor Scott & White [hospital] down in Waco, Texas. Because I shouldn’t be alive, Brian. Most people don’t survive an accident like that," he said.
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The former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel said that after the incident, he will continue fighting for Texas and America.
"I don't want to see it go down the path some people want it to go down. That's not what I took an oath to the Constitution for. That's not what the men and women gave their lives for and we remembered them on Memorial Day, so we're going to fight on."
Fox News' Dom Calicchio contributed to this report.
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