The accident
“I have a hillside, and I was mowing a slight slope, and next to the slight slope is a steep embankment I don’t mow,” Reising recalled. “The left tire of the mower slid off onto the slope … when the center of gravity moves suddenly, the mower likes to go with it. So the left tire fell off, and I knew I was in trouble.”
Reising said the right tire rolled back and slipped off, which left him teetering. He then hit the mower blades and turned them off.
“Because I figured I was going to have to try to bail, or I was going to flip over and roll down the hill backwards,” he said in a recent interview with the Journal-News. “As I tried to get my wits about me to get out, it already tipped backwards, down the hill. It landed on me upside down.”
Reising said he was conscious throughout the entire ordeal. He described the mower falling on top of him as being “jackhammered” into the ground.
“What happens when you take a hammer against something? It breaks,” he said. “I saw a white flash. I knew something bad happened.”
His back was broken.
Fortunately, Reising’s 16-year-old son Michael was weed-eating nearby and got the mower off his father. As seriously as he was hurt, the sergeant “gave thanks that I wasn’t dead.
“I knew right away that could have been it. So I went into survival mode, and I had my son call 911 and get hold of my wife, who was at a soccer game down the road,” Reising said. “I remember it was really hot out and the sun was blazing down on me.”
A medical helicopter flew Reising to University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he remained in intensive care until early July. Then he transferred to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital at Drake in Cincinnati, where he remains today, undergoing physical and occupational therapy, where even the simplest tasks have become a challenge.
“The first thing they taught me was how to transfer from the bed to the chair. That was a whole new experience,” he said.
For now, Reising cannot walk.
“I have what’s called a complete injury. A complete injury is no feeling in my legs. Whether I walk or not again, I don’t know. That’s in the hands of a being higher than I am,” he said with a quiver in his voice.
That doesn't mean he isn't going to try. And he certainly has the community rallying behind him. A Gofundme page for Reising has so far netted his family more than $22,000 from 195 donors in only two weeks, helping pay to make his home wheelchair accessible. The largest single contribution was $5,000 from an anonymous donor.
Reising’s sister, Amy Pittman, wrote on that page, “We are truly blessed! 839 Facebook shares, two tweets, and $10,215 … in one day …. I am humbled and have no words for the kindness being extended to Pete.”
From Miami (Vice) to Oxford
Aug. 11 will mark Reising’s 29th anniversary, not only of being with Oxford, but of being a police officer, period. He has spent his entire career with Oxford, being known as the officer who reached out to the less fortunate, said fellow officer Lt. Tom Horvath.
As is the case with so many kids, Reising became an officer after watching police shows on TV. But his path was a little different. He hadn’t thought of being an officer as a child — the inspiration struck later.
“I was originally at Miami University and was having some difficulty deciding what to do. It’s funny, I was watching some old cop shows from back in the day, ‘Miami Vice’ and another show called ‘Hunter.’ … I was just thinking, what am I going to do? I knew I had to get through college, and I didn’t want to disappoint my mother,” Reising said.
Then, watching the police shows turned on the light bulb over his head.
“Where can you be a little bit of everything, have a little excitement in your life, still be out there helping people, with different challenges every day? It’s like something gets thrown at you, and you don’t know what it is, and you’ve got to figure it out,” he said.
So he decided to go to the University of Cincinnati to pursue criminal justice. And while he did that, he learned about the opening in Oxford, and got the job in 1986.
His most memorable cases included a late 1980s shooting in Somerville that was called “a drive-by shooting.”
“This was before that term was even coined. I was set up at Cook Field on (Ohio 73) and U.S. 27. They gave a pretty good description, and as they drove by me, the passenger looked at me. Our eyes met and I knew it was them,” Reising said.
He pulled them over, called for backup, and “You’ve never seen so many police cars show up like that,” Reising said.
Beyond that, “I’ve had the opportunity to be one of the first K-9 officers. I’ve been a detective. I did a position that was called a tactical officer to focus on narcotics. I did that with my dog. I did SWAT,” he said.
Horvath said Reising “broke doors down for us. He was our breach man.”
But the highlight of the job for Reising was giving back to the community, in more ways than one. He found his appreciation evolved over time.
“When you’re young, you’re hungry to get into the action, and you know you’re doing something good for the community. But as you get older, there are some people who aren’t criminals who just need a little help. That’s been the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done, (helping) people down on their luck that don’t have anything. Homeless people, the ones that no one helps. Even ones that don’t want help, you try to help,” he said.
Now, Reising finds himself in the position of needing help. And that’s been hard not only for him, but for the entire Oxford police department.
“This is a tragedy to the Oxford Police Department Family,” Horvath said. We’re not feeling his pain, but we’re sharing his pain. We’ve lost a big part of our organization. It’s extremely devastating. There’ s no easier word for it.
“Not only do we have to heal a friend, we have to heal a family — the whole police department,” he continued. “That’s what we’re struggling with. Pete is bigger than life. He’s a big personality. And it hurts to see something happen to somebody like that.”
The silver lining, though, is that “it unites us as an OPD family, but bigger than that, it has united us as a community. Not just an Oxford community, but a church community, a school community. It makes you realize how many people Pete has touched in 29 years. Not just by saying hi — Pete visits people in the nursing home and brings them soda,” Horvath said. “He takes on those lost souls, and he does it from his heart.”
Moving forward
Reising is due to leave the hospital July 28, one month after his injury, and finally go home.
“I’m determined, with the grace of God, to walk again. If He has something else in store for me, I’m ready for it. In the immediate time frame, I complete my physical therapy and occupational therapy, so I can be independent in my wheelchair … the stuff I can do for myself, I’m going to do for myself.”
If he could do anything differently, he would have bought a lawnmower with a roll bar, a safety feature that might have kept the mower from tipping over and taking him with it.
According to Carl Purvis, a spokesman for the Consumer Products Safety Commission, from 2012 to 2014, the annual average of emergency room visits was 35,000 associated with ride-on mowers, 36,000 associated with powered walk-behind mowers, 2,000 associated with unpowered manual push mowers and 12,000 associated with unknown lawn mower types.
According to the agency’s lawn mower safety guidelines, slopes are a major factor in tip-over accidents. The commission recommends not mowing near drop-offs, ditches or embankments.
But the lesson Reising hopes people take away from his experience is two-fold.
“One is, if you have a lawnmower, any type of tractor, get a roll bar and get it on there now. I don’t think I would be here if I had a commercial-grade type tractor that had a roll bar. I think I probably would have survived with minor scrapes, because the roll bar would have braced me,” he said.
Beyond that, Reising said, “I’ve got my weak moments. Not as many as my strong moments. I’m not going to give up. I really don’t know if I’m going to walk again. I just look at each day, that maybe there’s a reason this has happened. This is just a freak accident, and with God’s help, I can look at different ways to make myself better.
“I’m going to be blunt and honest with you. I haven’t changed. I’m not mad at anybody. I’m not even overly mad it happened,” he said. “It just happened so fast. So I’m going to continue to build on my strong points and eliminate my weaknesses, and have a whole new appreciation for every different type of person.”
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