Mike Argento

margento@ydr.com

Editor's note: This story originally published Sept. 22, 2016.

Update:Kevin Bell has since been charged in the crash that killed his girlfriend.

Just the other week, Kevin Bell's mother told him, "You and women don't mix. Every time you get mixed up with one, something bad happens."

Bell echoed those words as he lay in a hospital bed in Indianapolis Thursday and said, "And then, this happened."

Bell, 39, and his 37-year-old girlfriend, Nikki Reed, were driving to her home Saturday in Indiana, going there for her son's birthday party, when her 1999 Ford Explorer ran off the road near the Kentucky-Indiana border, plunged down a ravine and hit a tree.

The crash killed Reed and trapped Bell in the vehicle for three days.

"It was terrible," the Dover-area man said. "I really loved her with everything I had. I feel terrible for her family."

The two met online in May, through a dating app called MeetMe. Reed came to visit him, traveling from her Seymour, Indiana, home every other weekend to spend time with Bell. She brought her son with her sometimes, and Bell recalled spending good times with the boy and his mother at Rocky Ridge Park.

He went to Indiana for the Fourth of July. He met her mother. He fell in love with Nikki. She was getting a divorce, Bell said, and the two had plans to be together once the split was final.

This last trip, Reed drove to York County to pick Bell up because his license had been suspended. He had been caught previously driving a vehicle without registration, inspection or insurance.

She picked him up at his Newberry Township trailer park, Mountain View Terrace, Friday evening, at about 8, and they went to dinner. She had a salad, and he had a New York strip steak. They spent the night at a motel and lit out for Indiana at 5 a.m. Saturday.

They stopped to get gas and something to drink – he got some Gatorade and she got a soda – at a Speedway above Cincinnati. When they returned to the truck, Bell said he asked Reed to drive. He doesn't think she heard him, because she didn't say anything and climbed into the passenger seat.

As they drove, Bell said, Reed would occasionally pull out her phone to show him photos. He admonished her, saying he had to keep his eyes on the road, that showing him pictures was a distraction. He had to be careful, he said, because he recalled a truck driver telling him that that part of the highway – U.S. Route 50 – was surrounded by ravines, and one false move, you could find yourself in deep trouble.

They were close to the Indiana-Kentucky border at about 2 or 3 p.m. when it happened.

Reed pulled her phone, unbuckling her seat belt to get it out of her pocket, and showed Bell a photo. Bell glanced at it, he said, taking his eyes off the road for "a split second."

The Explorer left the road and plunged down the steep ravine, stopping when it hit a tree.

Sharp pain shot through Bell's right leg. The pain, he said, was nothing compared to what he saw in the passenger seat.

Reed was still breathing, he said. It wasn't long, though, until she stopped. He reached over and felt for a pulse, finding none. "She was gone," he said.

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He began crying. He had watched life seep from the woman he had loved. He couldn't stop crying, he said. He couldn't believe it.

He tried to move, but the pain in his leg stopped him. After a while, he said, he was able to unbuckle his seat belt and climb into the back of the truck. The doors were buckled, he said. He thought the windows were intact. He couldn't move.

He cried until Monday. "I just had no more tears left," he said. "I cried all the tears I had."

He had tried to get out of the truck, but every time he moved, he said, his head spun. And then, there was his leg. His right shin had been snapped. His foot was swollen.

He stayed in the back of the truck for three days. He tried to sleep. He tried to gather his strength. "I was just trying to get myself together," he said.

Meanwhile, when the couple failed to show up for the birthday party, Reed's family reported her missing. On Sunday, a Newberry Township police officer knocked on the door of the trailer Bell shared with his mother, Gloria, and asked her whether Reed was there. She told them that she never met Reed, that she picked her son up at the entrance of the trailer park, and that was all she knew.

She texted her son, saying he should have been home by now. He didn't respond. She texted again: "Are you all right?" Still no response.

Bell could hear his phone vibrating – he had silenced the ringer while he was driving – but he didn't know where it was. Even after dark, when the phone vibrated, he couldn't see any light from its screen.

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He still had some Gatorade and sipped from the bottle. He urinated in a water bottle, he said. There was food in the car – leftovers from the couple's Friday night dinner – but the boxes were under Reed's seat, and he couldn't get to them. He was able to reach Reed's soda.

Saturday turned into Sunday. Sunday turned into Monday. Monday turned into Tuesday.

He thought nobody was ever going to find him. He needed to get out.

Eventually, he managed to crawl from the truck. When he hit the ground, he found his phone. It was lying facedown, explaining why he couldn't see any light coming from it when somebody tried calling him.

He texted his boss at Flight Systems, an electronics plant in Lewisberry, saying he had been in an accident. Then, his battery went dead.

He gathered some of his belongings – including two, 14-pound bowling balls in their bags – and began crawling up the steep ravine. He would go a few feet and then take a break to rest. It was tough going, he said. In all, it must've taken him four, four and half hours to make the 70- or 75-foot climb to the road.

He finally made it to the guardrail and began trying to flag down a car. People kept driving by; nobody would stop. Finally, after a couple of hours, one man did stop, and Bell asked to use his phone.

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"I have to call 911," he said. "I need an ambulance."

The ambulance and the police arrived. Bell was taken to a local hospital and transferred to a hospital in Indianapolis, where he had surgery to set the broken bone in his leg.

He expects to be in the hospital until Monday, he said. He is going to require physical therapy.

Lying in his bed, he said his thoughts are never very far from Reed and her family.

"I loved her," he said. "I feel terrible about what happened."

And he said he has been thinking things over.

"After all of this is done," he said, "I'm not going to look for anybody else until I get my life straightened out.

"She had her whole life planned out for when she was divorced to be with me. Now, it'll never happen."

His internet fame started with broken wheelchair