‘I need to know’: Alberta man retraces his steps after traumatic brain injury, waking from coma

Stan Dworkowski is missing time.

When he awoke in an Edmonton hospital room from an eight-day coma with 24 broken ribs and a fractured skull, he could not recall his own age or the faces of his closest friends.

More than a month later, Dworkowski says he still has no memory of the day he was found on July 14 injured, lying in a ditch in an industrial park south of the city. 

The 41-year-old man has been conducting his own investigation ever since, attempting to reconstruct the hours before he was found unresponsive along the side of the road near his business in Leduc County, on the western outskirts of Nisku, Alta. 

Dworkowski said he was found near an electric dirt bike in the ditch and taken from the scene by paramedics. Weeks after his release from hospital, RCMP are now investigating how he was injured.

“What happened that day and what transpired, from the morning to the night, I don’t know, as far as my memory of it.” 

Dworkowski said he suffered a brain bleed and a cranial fracture that left him with a traumatic brain injury and memory loss.

Along with head trauma and fractured ribs, he said his clavicle, orbital bone and pinky were broken and his shoulder was dislocated.  

Dworkowski said he spent a week in the intensive care unit of the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton before transferring to the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital, returning home on Aug. 14.

In his search for information, he has published a series of social media posts — sharing photos and videos — in his search for witnesses and tips.

To track his movements on that day, Dworkowski analyzed GPS data from his phone, pored over surveillance footage sourced from surrounding businesses, acquired his medical records and tracked down the man who found him.

He said he wants to “solve the mystery” of what happened to him, hoping that by retracing his steps, something will jog his memory. 

He said part of why he’s investigating is that he wonders how he could have been so seriously hurt. He’s gone back to the scene and still doesn’t understand how he ended up in the ditch.

Dworkowski said his colleagues have told him that he was working late inside his truck-polishing shop the night he was injured, and left his business on an electric dirt bike he borrowed from one of his employees.  

He said surveillance footage shows him on the bike around 6:30 p.m., entering a property about two kilometres south of his shop, just across the road from where he was found. 

He said, at this point, his GPS co-ordinates stop moving until his transfer to hospital.

Brock Anderson found Dworkowski that evening and called paramedics to the scene. 

In an interview with CBC News, the Fort McMurray man said he was staying in a hotel nearby before flying to B.C. for a family vacation. After his wife and kids went to bed around 8:30 p.m., he decided to go on a walk.

First he spotted a sandal. Then he came across Dworkowski, motionless in the tall grass, a few steps away from a dirt bike laying on its side.

“I could tell he was breathing, but he wasn’t responsive,” Anderson said. 

“It was quiet. The bike wasn’t making any sounds. He wasn’t making any sounds, so if I was walking on the other side of the road, I probably would not have found him.”

Anderson said he called an ambulance to the scene and left shortly after paramedics arrived.

He thought he would likely never get an update on the man he found but ended up connecting with Dworkowski after his colleague found one of his posts on social media.

Anderson said the pair spoke last week and he told Dworkowski where exactly he had been found and provided him with a video he had taken of the scene.

“He mentioned to me that he might have been laying in the ditch there for hours before I came,” Anderson said. “Obviously he didn’t know what happened. There’s a big gap. 

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know what happened.” 

In a statement to CBC News, officials with Emergency Health Services Alberta said paramedics responded to the area of 4th Street and 13th Avenue in Nisku at 8:50 p.m. on July 14, where a patient was found in serious, potentially life-threatening condition.

In response to questions about Dworkowski’s case, RCMP said a formal police investigation did not begin until Sept. 5.

RCMP said officers did not initially attend the scene when Dworkowski was found and the incident was not formally reported to them until last week.

Police said the investigation remains in its early stages but they have received no report of a collision or a hit and run at the time and location where Dworkowski was found. 

Dworkowski said he met with RCMP after a missing person’s file, created when his family reported him missing that night, was closed. He said he felt his injuries were traumatic enough to warrant further investigation.

He said he called the detachment more than a dozen times to ask for an investigation before the file was formally opened last week. He hopes his own research will help speed along the police investigation.

Dworkowski said doctors have told him it could be months or longer before his memory might improve. He’s decided to shut down both his truck-polishing operation and the Hot Wheels collectibles shop he owns, to focus on the long recovery ahead. 

He said the ordeal has been most traumatic for his wife and four children, who wrote about his experience on a community fundraising campaign page.

But Dworkowski admitted he has been struggling with the lasting effects of his traumatic brain injury as well as anxiety about the memories he’s missing. 

 “I need to know what happened so I can heal.”