Until the bridge fell in, their luck had been good. A Canadian farm boy, living a dream on the highways of North America. A grandmother enjoying her retirement. A young mother with a beautiful 3-month-old and a doctor husband. A happy couple of 18 years from Northwest Baltimore, heading home.

Paul McIntosh, Elizabeth Freeman, Henri Patrice McQueen Williams, Robert Norman Taylor and Regina Lee Brehon.

Five strangers.

Four vehicles.

Three fates.

A two-loop highway.

One old bridge and one shared moment of tragic timing.

Their lives intersected late Tuesday afternoon on the Beltway, a circular highway without intersections. It is a crowded, concrete Internet where thousands of people share the same road without knowing each other.

It is a road shaped like a clock and governed by the clock, the daily rush hour being as inescapable as chance and death.

When the excavator attached to McIntosh's truck knocked down the pedestrian bridge at Shelbourne Road, when the others' cars slammed into the fallen span, the Beltway -- and thus Baltimore -- came to a standstill.

Over the next 24 hours, hundreds of people -- visited the scene.

The news shocked them and drew them to Arbutus, not only because Taylor died, not only because three others were seriously injured, not only because McIntosh -- the gentlest of young men -- will have to live with his mistake for the rest of his life.

The accident stunned because it happened on modern Baltimore's de facto main street. It surprised because big concrete highways and bridges and commutes seem more fixed and permanent than just about anything else.

It stopped Baltimore because the Beltway -- despite the Towson traffic jams, the overturned chemical tankers near the Key Bridge and the sun that shines in west-side drivers' eyes -- is a psychological border marking suburban stability and a life of less risk.

"People die in accidents all the time, but this one makes me think about chance," said Don Shiflett, 57, a press operator from Arbutus who was standing beside the Beltway and the remains of the bridge yesterday. He came because he was curious about the accident. In his shirt pocket, he had a dozen lottery tickets.

"I mean, on the Beltway, you never think about it. You're driving to a house someplace. You take life for granted," he said, getting into his black Ford pickup and heading back on the road. "I've got a better odds of winning on one of these tickets than having a bridge fall on me. It's just average, solid people."

Tuesday on the Beltway, McIntosh, Freeman, Williams, Taylor and Brehon -- as described by friends, relatives and police -- were exceptional only for their bad luck.

In love with the road

Paul McIntosh grew up in Brussels, which was too small to fulfill all his tastes. The town of 500 in Ontario, Canada, is a difficult two-hour drive from Toronto. Home was his parents' 200-acre dairy farm.

The youngest of John and Marie McIntosh's eight children, the 6-foot-2 teen-ager played hockey, raced motorbikes and worshiped baseball. After high school, he found work on farms and in machine shops, his fiancee said. But none of those jobs took him out of Brussels.

Trucking did.

"He loves it; he really found something," said his mother. In only a year on the job, she said, "I think he had already seen most of the 50 states." The hours were long, and maybe he could have used more sleep. But his driving record, as far as is known, was perfect.

Tuesday afternoon he lined his truck up on McComas Street outside the Locust Point Marine Terminal and waited to pick up a huge Caterpillar excavator. Police believe he might have been too tired, that he might have doctored his logbook, a practice that has been the focus of considerable controversy for the trucking industry.

But no one would say for sure yesterday.

His mother still hadn't talked to him yesterday morning, but she suspects he was his usual self: polite, happy, a bit quiet. His luck had been good. This job was to take him back to London, Ontario -- an hour from Brussels -- and then home.

He was engaged to be married.

His route would give him, from an elevated stretch of Interstate 95, a glorious view of Camden Yards, the temple of his beloved game. He was 24 years old.

Lowering the excavator's boom, keeping the loaded truck's height under the approved 14 feet 2 inches and securing the excavator were his responsibility. Police say he failed at all three. The boom rose too high, and the excavator bounced.

At about 5, he drove out of the terminal and back onto McComas, past idling train cars, down a hill and out onto I-95 south, in the direction of the Beltway. Fortune was still with him.

With the excavator on top, his truck needed a 17-foot clearance, and the three overpasses on I-95 offered plenty of room. He turned onto the Beltway, heading west.

Wisecracking ways

That afternoon at the Port of Baltimore, Bob Taylor was at work in Fairfield, behind the wheel of a blue company van. He shuttled drivers between the Chesapeake and Atlantic terminals, helping them to sort and arrange imported Isuzu Troopers around the vast parking lots at Hobelmann Port Services.

As usual, his wisecracking ways helped pass the workday.

"A happy-go-lucky guy," said field operations manager Deborah Myers.

"Kept this place going with his comedy," said co-worker Ron Steele.

Some days, it was Taylor's job to drive the new vehicles -- many fresh off the ship, others bound for export. He'd find the correctly numbered parking slot on the 55-acre yard and hit the hash marks with the front tires. These cars are seen daily by thousands of drivers at the south end of the Harbor Tunnel.

Other days, he had to gas up the new cars. Tuesday, that meant driving the shuttle van.

After his 6 a.m.-to-2: 30 p.m. shift, Taylor jumped into his Dodge Durango and headed toward Bell Atlantic's downtown offices. Regina Lee Brehon worked there, and "he picked her up practically every day," said terminal manager John Restauro.

They both grew up in Arlington, in Northwest Baltimore, and for the past 18 years they have shared a life in a red brick duplex there. They also shared a love of travel (they took cruises in the Caribbean) and laughter.

"She has a good sense of humor and is a lot of fun to work with," said Debra E. Thomas, Brehon's supervisor at Bell Atlantic. "She's great to be around."

Brehon, 51, began working for the phone company more than three decades ago. She rose to become a trusted worker who frequently trained new employees in company procedures for handling payrolls and other administrative duties.

For the past year, Brehon had been working in network services. Her father, John Holland, said Brehon had been contemplating retirement this year. But her supervisor said Brehon had recently mentioned that she might seek a promotion in network services, a position being vacated by a retiring co-worker.

"She said, 'You know, I might want to try something different,' " Thomas said. "She was always contemplating change and trying new things."

Even though Brehon has a license, she doesn't have a car and doesn't like to drive. At Bell Atlantic's Light Street offices, co-workers were used to seeing her heading down in the elevator to meet Taylor for the ride home.

Family members are not sure why the two ended up on the Beltway. Perhaps they were just varying the route home, as Taylor sometimes liked to do. Perhaps they were picking up a birthday gift for daughter Nicole.

Grandmother and tiger

Elizabeth "Betty" Freeman's thoughts Tuesday were also on family. At about the time Taylor left to pick up Brehon, she drove her white Nissan Maxima to the Baltimore School for the Arts. There, she picked up her 15-year-old granddaughter and drove to her daughter's home in Bel Air.

At 68, Freeman, a retired secretary, was still very active. She and her husband, James, who owned a stationery store, had moved from Towson to the Charlestown Retirement Community in 1992.

There, she was secretary of the residents' council, became a lay assistant in the United Protestant Congregation, and entertained friends with constant jokes. She went out when she could, taking in a Baltimore Pops concert last week. During the days, she made the trip to Bel Air to help care for her five grandchildren.

"She worked like a tiger for her grandchildren," said Edwin W. Inglis, 77, a retired Exxon marketing executive and friend. "She spends all her time up there, back and forth commuting. She even spends the night to make sure the kids get to school on time in the morning and have a hot breakfast."

Tuesday afternoon, though, she decided to head home. She took the Beltway south from Bel Air, through Essex and Anne Arundel County. By the time she neared the pedestrian bridge, she was only a mile from Wilkens Avenue and dinner with her husband at home.

Future full of possibilities

Henri Patrice McQueen Williams was only days away from her first wedding anniversary as she took the Beltway home from work Tuesday. A Georgia native employed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore as an accountant, Williams saw a future as bright as the low sun on the Beltway's west side. Her husband, Mallory, had just finished medical school.

Her daughter had turned 3 months old that day. Next week, the family would move to Detroit, where Mallory would begin his residency at Wayne State University. Just the other day, they had mailed the lease for an apartment on campus.

"She had moved here to Maryland and essentially it was an adventure," Mallory Williams said. "We were going to our next adventure in Detroit, and we were looking forward to that."

Her husband sat at home in Westminster. In 30 minutes or so, his wife would be due. The trip -- up the Beltway to Interstate 795 -- was one she had made thousands of times without incident.

No time to stop

None of the five saw the bridge in time. On the back of McIntosh's truck, the elbow of the excavator hit the footbridge, which has been closed for two years. The bridge rose up at first, then fell.

In the next instant, luck ceased to matter. Only physics. There was not enough time and distance for Taylor and Brehon's Durango, Freeman's Maxima or Williams' Corolla to stop.

McIntosh's truck kept rolling and hit another bridge before stopping 400 yards away. Police questioned him Tuesday night and told him he faces charges. Then they let him go. His location last night was unknown.

In Canada, his mother heard about the accident from a reporter. Her first question was about her son's well-being. Her second was about the condition of the dead and injured.

The three women were taken to Maryland Shock Trauma, with their relatives close behind. By 9 p.m., doctors announced that all would remain in the hospital for days.

Freeman suffered a fractured wrist, ankle and breastbone but, due to her age, was placed on a respirator because her vital organs were having trouble responding to the stress of her injuries.

"Mrs. Freeman's in a relatively precarious situation," Dr. Thomas Scalea said yesterday afternoon. Her friends at Charlestown were updated on her condition through the community's closed-circuit television.

Surgeons repaired Williams' broken femur, or thigh bone, by inserting a foot-long metal rod. She is in serious condition, but her husband said the family felt fortunate.

Brehon is being treated for a bruised lung, and doctors are evaluating the condition of her heart. Medically, she seems to be doing well, but she is still suffering from Tuesday night's news.

When her father, John Holland, visited, she asked about Taylor: "I've been calling for him, but he didn't answer," she said.

"He isn't going to answer," her father said. Bob Taylor had died at the scene.

Outside the rooms, these families -- strangers from the concrete Internet -- met for the first time. They comforted Holland, hugged and cried. They answered each others' questions.

"It's so strange to have all those people gathered together there," Mallory Williams said. "It was like fate or something."

Sun staff writers Jay Apperson, Brenda J. Buote, Dan Thanh Dang, Gady Epstein, Peter Hermann, Howard Libit, Lisa Respers and Dail Willis, and researcher Jean Packard contributed to this article.

Pub Date: 6/10/99