Семья пересматривает обстоятельства гибели дедушки: брат утверждает, что он выпал из машины во сне

On August 3rd, I told of how I might have come to be a race-horse owner had family circumstances worked out differently. My grandpa Philip (my dad’s dad) was tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident in Deming, New Mexico circa 1935. Granddad was only 30 years old at the time. My dad was just seven. Before my brother Bernard passed in 2016, lung cancer being his official cause of death, he confided in me that while on their way to Los Angeles, inside on the back seat of the car my grandpa was traveling in, he had fallen asleep. As my brother explained it, while propped up against one of the doors, the door had apparently accidentally opened and my grandfather fell out with one of the car’s back wheels running over him. What apparently was the cause of my grandpa Philip’s death. Now knowing the way cars were built in those days, as I see it, opening a car door took a fair amount of elbow grease. If I am halfway correct, the inside-door-release lever was oriented horizontally. And, if passenger safety was any kind of consideration back then, it would seem to me that in order to physically open the door from the inside, this would require one to pull up on said lever, as opposed to one pushing down on it. If that were the case, then I doubt anyone in their sleep would, using a free arm and hand, be able to physically pull up on the door-opening lever and open the door. I may never know how my grandpa actually died. What my brother told me was handed down to him from our dad. Why my brother felt compelled to share this information at the time he did, I don’t know that either. I never asked him why he felt compelled to share that piece of family history with me. In hindsight, I probably should have asked him why he was sharing such info at the time. He must have had a reason. Had he not done so, then I would have never known. I, then, in speculating, make the assumption that he just wanted me to know.