Man from Conche, N.L., hits moose, but can't remember it

A man from Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula struck a moose while driving in the early morning hours Monday, but says he has no recollection of it.

Stephen Bromley, from Conche, said he can remember seeing the moose appear on the road in front of his car, but after that, things are fuzzy.

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  I never even got time hardly to see him.- Stephen Bromley

"I never even got time hardly to see him," said Bromley.

Bromley, 49, drove roughly another 20 kilometres before he was alerted that something was wrong.

The front windshield was smashed in, the bumper and front of the car dented and the roof of the car was peeled back, but despite all that damage Bromley said he remembers nothing and just kept on driving.

Drawing a blank

"Never noticed a thing. It was a man pulling me over and he said, 'You're after hitting a moose.' I said, 'What?' and I got out," said Bromley.

On The Go0:01N.L. man can't remember moose collision

Stephen Bromley hit a moose with his car, but didn't realize it until Tom Canning stopped him on the road and asked what happened

"He said, 'Boy, you got to go to hospital.' I said, 'No, I'm going home.' 'Oh no,' he said, 'You're going to the hospital. You're to pieces in the face.'"

That man was Tom Canning, from Roddickton, who said he passed Bromley while travelling in the other direction on the highway.

"When the car passed me, I looked a second time to be sure that part of the roof was gone off of the car and it looked like there was a man driving it with no head on his shoulders because all I could see was red," said Canning.

When Canning looked in his rearview mirror and saw the car swerving on the road, he turned around and followed until the damaged car stopped on the side of the road.

At first, Canning didn't know who the driver of the car was, but when Bromley responded he realized who it was.

"I said, 'My Lord skipper, what happened to you?' … he said, 'I don't know.'"

'Covered totally with blood'

Canning realized what must have happened when he noticed a part of a moose pelt inside Bromley's car.

He was buried with moose manure and his face was covered totally with blood.- Tom Canning

"I got him in my car, but he was in one terrible mess. He was buried with moose manure and his face was covered totally with blood," said Canning.

Canning took Bromley to his sister's home to clean up and try to convince him to go to the hospital, which he eventually did.

Even days after the collision, Bromley said he still has no memory of the collision.

"Everything is a blank. I don't understand it," he said

"The shape I'm in now, sometimes I got a job to get out of bed. I got to haul myself up … even getting around the house, I got to hold on to stuff because the house is spinning around. Because I had a bad concussion on my head."

Not the 1st time

It's not the first case of someone hitting a moose with their vehicle and being unable to recall anything about the incident.

In May 2012, a woman from central Newfoundland drove about 40 kilometres with her windshield smashed and the roof of her car peeled back after she struck a moose.

That woman drove all the way to work before a colleague asked what happened to her and her car, and told her it looked like she had been in a collision.

Bromley said he heard about that woman's story and found it hard to believe at the time.

"When I heard that story first, my father and I were talking about, I said, 'I can't understand why someone hit a moose and kept on going and didn't know they hit one," he said.

"But today, [after] what happened to me? I can really understand her point of view now."

While he's no longer in hospital, Bromley said he's not sure how long his recovery will take.