Apparently, Mahmoud Diop has been watching way too many movies. Police haven’t yet discovered why he chose to suddenly try jumping from his car to catch a passing semi. The entire incident is insanely bizarre and under investigation. There isn’t a lot known, even days afterward, about the man’s condition either. He was removed from the scene to nearby Prince George’s Hospital but his status remains murky. They may not be saying so but his chances of survival seem slim at best.
Jumping from the window
The only personal details released so far are that the man’s name is Mahmoud Diop, he’s 30 years old, and a resident of the Washington, D.C. area. Someone with that name has accounts on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn but they have not been verified as his.
LinkedIn describes a former driver for FedEx. Nobody knows what was going through his mind on Thursday afternoon but he shocked everyone traveling along the I-495 inner loop near Route 450 by unexpectedly jumping from the left front window of his Honda.
As related by the driver of the rig, he saw the man “jump out of the open driver’s side window and attempt to jump” onto the back of his truck. After that, he watched the Honda “continue to travel without anyone inside the vehicle.”
It wasn’t a Tesla, but acted like one on autopilot. Police note that “the Honda traveled on the right shoulder before it struck the guard rail, where it came to rest.” It seems that Diop shifted into neutral before jumping. He came close, but didn’t catch the truck.
Right around 3:00 p.m. the 911 calls started coming in to College Park Barracks in Maryland of “a body lying in the roadway.” They rushed to close three lanes. People jumping out of their car on the freeway isn’t something you see every day.
“Upon their arrival, the body of a man wearing black sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt was found lying in the travel portion of I-495.” They quickly found the black Honda Accord located on the right shoulder “with the engine running and in neutral.”
A 65 mph face-plant
It’s a miracle that Mr. Diop wasn’t a trail of red paste by the time police arrived, but it doesn’t seem as if he was struck by any vehicles after jumping from his own and missing his target. Simply doing a face-plant into the concrete at 65 mph, or so, can really ruin your day all by itself.
Hopefully, the lack of news from the hospital is one of those no news is good news situations but police would really like to talk to him to find out why he did it, that’s for sure. Maybe he wasn’t psycho and heard migrants screaming from inside and tried to save them? Who knows? The truth usually turns out to be a whole lot stranger than anything television writers manage to come up with.
Detectives agree that what they found at the scene totally matches up with what the diesel driver told them and along with that, “multiple witnesses provided similar accounts.”
Jumping out the window for no reason is something which people tend to notice. Nobody is even hinting about why he chose to do what he did. Friends and relatives haven’t come out to say what kind of a person he is, or if he has any radical motivations or beliefs.
Reporters were all over the scene shooting video of cars driving by as police wandered around doing police things but after the jumping incident itself happened, there was nothing dramatic to record. Three lanes of the freeway were closed but they managed to keep at least one lane open so traffic wasn’t totally snarled.
Everyone who knows Mr. Diop is grateful to all the alert drivers who managed to avoid hitting the incapacitated man, even under such sudden and unexpected conditions. America is wishing for his speedy recovery, and really wants to know why he did it.
