People who have accidentally caused the death of another person, what happened?

1. I was dating this girl that was a little dysfunctional due to being sexually abused by her grandpa and nobody knew about it. I noticed some red flags and got her to open up and tell me about it. After we broke up, I told her mom she should stop inviting grandpa over to Thanksgiving dinners due to the sexual abuse. The mom called me a liar, but after asking the other daughters/cousins about it they confirmed it was true and that they had all been molested too. After word got back to grandma, she said, "I'll take care of it". Fast forward a week and grandpa is dead. Apparently Grandpa had a lot of serious medications he was taking and grandma messed with the dosage, which killed him. His death was ruled natural cause and nothing ever happened to grandma.
   — rollcyclones


2. I've posted this before in more detail but the truncated version is when i was 16 years old I hit an 87 year old man after he ran stop sign. I was with him holding his hand when he died on the sidewalk. He had a heart attack. They weren't able to determine if he had the heart attack before the accident which would explain why he blew through the stop sign or if he had one as a result. His family was very gracious and I am very grateful for them. His son called me the day after it happened and told me his mom had died 6 months prior, his dad had been very depressed and while they were sad he died this way they were happy to think their parents were reunited.
   — Gaia227


3. War survivor from chechnya 94-96 war. I told a girl, maybe 17 year old, to run out from the apartment building because I was so sure it was going to collapse. It didn't collapse, and she ran out into a hail of gunfire and died. I was so scared that I stayed in the building and it just never collapsed the entire time, so I left out the back. I often think about that, it was such a quick decision. She was right near the door, I was on my way out because the building felt like it was shaking, and I saw her and said "run out, the roof is gonna fall!" and she ran out in a hurry and got blown apart by gunfire, shrieking in pain until she was hit again and presumably died. I wish I didn't tell her that obviously. It still sort of haunts me to this day, especially her screaming. But I also know that I made the decision in good will... trying to save her life. And to be fair the building REALLY felt like it was going to collapse, and everyone was running out, not just me. Anybody would have told her to run as well. Nobody knew they were opening fire on the building. I know it sounds like lame justifications but it is all I can think of to help ease my mind. Anybody would have done the same. I hope at least...
   — willmaster123


4. When I was around 4, I was molested by my cousin who was babysitting me. I told on her and she committed suicide.
   — MysticSpork
   
   
5. Turned left into my sister's driveway at 3 am. A guy on a Harley was doing 60 mph in a 30, with no headlight. My half ton pickup left 4 feet of skid marks from being pushed back by the force. I still remember seeing him do mid air somersaults this was 1976
   — bigcityornot


6. I was driving from a friend's house last November on a road I've driven a million times. I knew one area was particularly dark at night because the city hadn't replaced the street lights in over a decade. The dark area also crests a hill in a residential area between two crosswalks that are far apart, so people cross the road at the top of this hill. Knowing all this, I still never saw him coming. There was a huge thud and my window was cracked all the way across. I turned around and saw him laying motionless on the side walk. It was late and noone else was there, so it was just me (parked on a sidestreet) and this body. I checked his pulse while I was on the phone with 911 bit couldn't feel anything because I was shaking so badly. This was maybe a quarter mile from the hospital so the paramedics were there before I even realized what happened. They put him up on a stretcher with this strange device that I found out later was to automatically compress his chest. The cops showed up and I finally saw my car with a flashlight. There was a large chunk of flesh and blood caught on the side of my car. I passed my sobriety test and they took me home. He lived for three days before dying due to complications of the accident, and was never conscious during that time. I found out through a friend of mine who's the editor at a local paper that the police were still considering charges (also how I found out that he died). I was obviously a mess about the accident but also the possibility of involuntary manslaughter. After the officer called me to tell me officially that he died, I consulted a lawyer and was basically told not to talk to the police again and to let them conduct their investigation. Two grueling weeks later, i got a phone call at midnight from the officer who gave me my sobriety test (he worked third shift). He told be that the guy was incredibly intoxicated and basically stepped into oncoming traffic without paying attention. With that info, I wasn't to be charged and I could go pick my car back up. The relief I felt was indescribable but also terrible that I could feel so great in a situation where someone died. What made that feeling worst was that the officer told me the family of the guy were super concerned with how I was doing and that they wanted to tell me they didn't blame me. He was 24 and had just graduated college. It was his last night in town before going back to his hometown. I go to his Facebook page every once in a while just so I don't forget what he looked like. Sorry if this comes through as rambling but I've been actually explained this in writing before. EDIT: Clarified / spelling on a few things. EDIT 2: Thank you all very much for your words. There arent a ton of people I can talk to about this because they just get super sad and coddling--so it's a strange breath of fresh air to get some of this stuff out in the open. Thank you.
   — DeathThrowaway2216


7. It was my mother-in-law's birthday, and her daughter and son-in-law had dinner for the event at their place. My wife, three kids, and I drove out after work. As we pulled up to their cul-de-sac home in the dark, I saw something odd in the grass between the sidewalk and street near their mailbox. When I got out, an old man (80+ y.o.) called over to me asking if I wouldn't mind helping him up. Said he had been out for a walk, stumbled, and had been in that spot for about 45 minutes. My wife and daughters went inside the house, my then 12 y.o. son stayed with me while I helped the man up. Wonderful guy, started saying this was the icing on the cake for his day, as he had fallen asleep early afternoon on his couch with a lit cigarette, which caught the couch on fire. Fire department came, put the fire out with little damage, and moved the couch to the curb when they were done. By this time, my brother-in-law had come outside with us. We walked the man back to his house, about 5 doors down. During our trip there, he regaled us with stories of him in the navy during the war, and I'm ashamed to say, I can't remember which war he had said. He made special not to talk to my son about how wonderful it was that he was helping. Introduced himself to us as 'Bill'. Said he was the 'Last unpaid Bill'. Thought that was pretty clever. As we made to leave, he asked if we would bring his couch from the curb back up to the house for him, not sure why he wanted it, didn't ask. So my BIL and I moved the couch and set it next to the house outside of his garage. We wished 'Bill' well, then headed back to the house for dinner. When I got in, I noticed that my shirt smelled of burnt plastic. BIL gave me a sweatshirt to change into, and we had a great birthday celebration before I and the family left about 2 hours later for home. Around 2:30 the next morning, our phone rang. My wife answered, and I pretended to be more asleep than I actually was so I didn't have to deal with a bad phone call in the wee early hours. They're very seldom about good thing. It was the police department from the town my BIL and SIL lived in. They asked me questions about my activities the previous evening while I was at their house. The fucking couch reignited and burned Bill's house down, killing him in the process. The police grilled my BIL, examined his arms, then called me. I don't think I slept well for over a month afterwards, and couldn't get the tragedy out of my head for a long time. I should have known from the smell on my clothes that it wasn't safe to move that damnable couch. I should have put the pieces together, but I was just too interested in getting back to my family to celebrate. Nothing more ever came of it, but I'll never get rid of the knowledge that, if I hadn't committed to one simple action that I had performed, then another human being would not have died. I was relieved when my SIL and BIL moved a couple of years later, because I hated seeing that empty lot every time I went to their house. This was maybe 11 years ago, but to this day, about once a year around my mother-in-law's birthday, my brother-in-law and I still have a toast to the Last Unpaid Bill.
   — Scheckschy


8. I'm at least partially responsible for three deaths. So I'm a weather forecaster. A few years ago I was forecasting for Afganistan. Now, we were doing these forecasts from a base in the states, which means we had to coordinate our forecast with someone who was deployed to Afghanistan. Sometimes the downrange forecaster was really experienced, other times they weren't. It was a mixed bag. Anyway, I had been forecasting for this region for at least 2 years at the time of this incident. I was familiar with it, and I was actually in a supervisory capacity, simply overseeing all of the forecasts going out in my zone. Well one day I was talking with one of my forecasters about the potential for large hail and how I'd like him to put that in his forecast. Now that's a BIG thing to put in a forecast because of how operationally significant it is. Aircraft must be put in hangars, missions are cancelled, assets must be protected, etc. So when it came time to discuss this with the downrange forecaster, he was absolutely against it. He didn't want to brief that to the commander because again, missions have to be canceled based on what you *think* will happen. If you're wrong, you've set back a lot of.people and wasted a lot of time. So the deployed forecaster tries to argue against it, but his reasoning really just boiled down to "I don't want to brief that." So when i wasn't looking, he essentially just pulled rank on my junior forecaster and forced him to take it out of the forecast. And so it went out to the base with no hail in it, only hinting at some vicinity thunderstorms. Well when I noticed I was pissed but I said screw it, we'll let him be wrong. This was the first time I'd ever wanted to put large hail in a forecast. Maybe we *were* over forecasting it. Nope. Basically right on schedule, a huge thunderstorm popped up and dumped large hail on the base. It did a few million in damage to aircraft, injured a helo pilot who was pre-flighting his bird, and killed 3 Afghan National Army soldiers who had left on a patrol and couldn't find any cover. They wound up beaten to death by hail. That has always bugged me. They didn't need to die. We knew the potential was there and I basically just let an incorrect forecast go out that got them killed.
   — TheDirtyWeatherMan