Matthew Fijalkiewicz was making the familiar late-night drive from his weekend job at the Duluth Holiday Inn to his home in Superior on Sunday when something went horribly wrong.

“There was just this loud bang,” he said.

“It kind of felt like the car exploded or something, but I realized the car is still here,” Fijalkiewicz recalled. “At first I thought maybe the airbag went off. But no, that wasn’t the case, because I saw the steering wheel was still intact. Then, I noticed there was a big hole in the windshield.”

As his 2013 Ford Taurus continued to hurtle down Interstate 35, Fijalkiewicz struggled to process what was happening, still numb to the serious injury he had sustained from a rock that State Patrol investigators now believe someone threw from a freeway overpass.

“At first, everything just kind of froze up. I felt like I was in shock, and I couldn’t move. I kind of felt the car accelerate, like my foot must have hit the gas pedal,” he said.

As the vehicle picked up speed, Fijalkiewicz said, he felt himself being pressed into the back of his seat. “I thought: Oh boy, this isn’t good.”

But the 22-year-old student teacher regained his composure and managed to pull his car to the side of the road without crashing.

He called 911 and waited for help, not yet realizing the extent of his injuries.

“At first, I felt a little bit of shoulder pain. But I thought I was okay,” Fijalkiewicz said.

Then, he said, he felt his left arm “kind of seizing up.”

“I couldn’t move it very well, and that’s when I knew something wasn’t right,” Fijalkiewicz said.

On Thursday morning, Fijalkiewicz was released from the hospital after undergoing surgery to repair a fractured clavicle.

“I have a plate with some screws holding my shoulder together,” he said, adding that there also had been some concern about bruising around his heart and lungs.

Fijalkiewicz said he was a bit stiff in the shoulder but didn’t have much pain.

Yet, he is left to wonder.

“If I had been driving just a little bit more to the left, it would have hit me square in the chest and probably would have killed me,” Fijalkiewicz said.

He described the rock that was discovered in his car as being “a good 10 to 11 inches in diameter.”

Fijalkiewicz didn’t see anything suspicious before his injury as he traveled south toward the Bong Bridge on Sunday night, but State Patrol investigators suspect the rock was hurled from an overpass at either 37th Avenue West or 40th Avenue West at about 11:20 p.m.

“They believe, and I believe, that a misled individual deliberately threw it over the edge,” Fijalkiewicz said. “It was probably meant to scare the bejesus out of somebody.”

Fijalkiewicz described feeling an odd mix of fortune and misfortune.

“I’m lucky to be here. It very easily could have killed me. At the same time, I feel unlucky that the individual who got hurt in this had to be me,” he said.

Fijalkiewicz, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, works as a student teacher interning in a third-grade classroom at Cooper Elementary School in Superior, and said he aims to be back on the job today. He received a number of get-well cards from students while he was in the hospital and said they really lifted his spirits.

Fijalkiewicz hadn’t expected to miss so much time in the classroom.

“I remember when I was in the emergency room, the only thing I could think was: I have to get to school. I have to get to school,” he said, recalling the night of his injury. “The first thing I did was I texted my cooperating teacher, saying, ‘Hey I might be a little late tomorrow.’ I didn’t realize exactly how bad it was, and I think they maybe gave me a little bit of something to help with the pain.”

Fijalkiewicz still wrestles with questions he’d like to put to his assailant.

“I would really love to understand why they would do such a thing. Just trying to understand what was going on in their mind at the time. Was this just a joke or were they intentionally trying to hurt someone? I would like to get an idea why. Why would you do that? Why would you throw a rock from an overpass? Why did that strike you as a good idea?” he asked.

Fijalkiewicz is not overly confident the case will ever be solved.

“Part of me believes it’s going to be kind of a long shot, but I really hope they come to terms with what they did. I hope they come forward,” he said.

Fijalkiewicz asked for help, saying: “I really hope if someone has knowledge of who did this or even has an idea, that they wouldn’t keep that kind information to themselves, because if someone did this once, what’s going to stop them from doing it again? And what if someone’s not as lucky as I was? For the next person, for their sake, I hope this person learns a lesson or gets stopped in some way.”

The rock that struck Fijalkiewicz is being held as evidence, but he has asked for its return when authorities have completed their investigation.

“It will look excellent on my mantelpiece when I’m older. I would really like it back, because this is not something I should forget,” he said. “It makes me appreciate things I have and it reminds you how quickly things can happen and be taken away from you.”

Anyone with information about the Nov. 16 incident is asked to contact Sgt. Aaron Churness at (218) 302-6104 or Sgt. Neil Dickenson at (218) 302-6105.