A real-life story · Texas, United States, 1989
Don Piper’s near-death experience
In January 1989, a Texas prison truck crushed Baptist pastor Don Piper’s car on a bridge. According to his book, the paramedics could not find a pulse and covered him with a tarp. He later said he spent those minutes in heaven, at a gate, surrounded by relatives and friends who had died.
Piper told the story in 2004 in the book 90 Minutes in Heaven, which became a bestseller and was made into a movie in 2015. According to the book, another pastor crawled into the car to pray for him, and Piper came back singing a hymn with him. We tell it step by step and then look at what could be checked. If you only want the evidence, skip straight to what can be checked.
Step 1
January 18, 1989, in the morning · Trinity Pines, Texas · Don’s account
A pastor leaves a conference and takes the lake road in the rain
Don Piper was 38 and the pastor of a Baptist church in Alvin, near Houston. He was coming back from a pastors’ conference at Trinity Pines, a center by Lake Livingston, north of Houston.
The conference ended earlier than planned. A little after eleven, Don fastened his seat belt, got into his red Ford Escort, and took the road toward Huntsville. It was raining and cold.
To cross the lake, the road runs above the water for a long stretch. It has two lanes and no shoulder. At the end there is an old steel bridge over the Trinity River.
It was the first time Don had crossed that bridge.
Step 2
Around 11:45 a.m. · Bridge over the Trinity River · Don’s account, based on the accident report and the witnesses
A prison truck crosses into his lane and runs over his car
Don does not remember the crash. He writes that everything he knows about it comes from the accident report and from the witnesses.
It was almost 11:45, and Don was reaching the end of the bridge. An 18-wheeler crossed the center line and hit his car head-on. It was driven by an inmate. It was a prison truck on its way to pick up food, and two guards were following it in another vehicle. According to the report Don quotes, the truck was going more than 100 kilometers per hour.
The truck crushed the car against the bridge railing and rolled over it. Then it sideswiped two other cars, whose drivers got out almost unhurt. The inmate didn’t get a scratch. The railing kept Don’s car from falling into the water.
The guards called the prison for help.
Step 3
A few minutes later · No pulse, according to the paramedics · Don’s account
The paramedics can’t find a pulse and cover him with a tarp
According to the book, help arrived within a few minutes. A paramedic examined Don. He could not find a pulse and said Don had been killed instantly.
The roof of the car was caved in. One of Don’s legs was crushed against the dashboard, and the other was broken. His left arm had almost been torn from his body. No one tried to resuscitate him. To get him out, they had to cut the car open, so they covered him with a tarp and took care of the others.
Around a quarter past one, according to the book, they checked again for a pulse and did not find one. The county had no coroner, so they were waiting for a justice of the peace to certify the death before they could move the body.
Don says that, in the meantime, he was somewhere else.
Step 4
During that time · Don’s account
Don says he finds himself standing at a gate, surrounded by relatives and friends who had died
Don says he did not go through any tunnel. At the very moment of his last memory of the bridge, a very bright light wrapped around him. When he came to, he was standing up.
In front of him was a crowd of people at a large gate. He recognized every one of them. They were people he had known who had already died. The first was his grandfather, who hugged him and called him “Donnie,” as he always had. Then he saw a childhood friend who had died in a car accident at 19. He also saw a classmate who had drowned in a lake, two teachers, and his great-grandmother.
He says his great-grandmother had been hunched over with age and almost never wore her dentures. There she stood up straight and smiled with her own teeth. They were all the age he remembered them, but without any illness.
Don says he had never felt so loved. According to him, each of these people had helped him in some way to become a Christian.
Then they all began to move toward the gate.
Step 5
During that time · Don’s account
Don says he hears endless music and sees streets of gold on the other side, but he doesn’t go in
Don says what he remembers most is what he heard. He heard something like a huge fluttering. He thought it was angels’ wings, although he never saw any angels. He also heard music, hundreds of songs at once, all praising God, without any one of them drowning out the others. Some were hymns he had sung at his church, and others he had never heard before.
The gate was set in a wall that had no end to either side or upward. It was the color of pearl, and it shone. On the other side he could see streets that looked like gold and a light that kept growing stronger. He did not see God.
He got right up to the gate, about to walk through it.
Then, as suddenly as he had arrived, he was no longer there.
Step 6
Between 12:30 and 12:45 p.m. · On the bridge · Don’s account, from what the other pastor said
Another pastor stuck in the traffic jam asks for permission to pray for the man in the red car
Dick Onarecker was a Baptist pastor from Klein, north of Houston. He had been at the same conference with his wife, Anita. They had left a few minutes before Don, but they stopped for coffee. When they reached the lake, they ran into the traffic jam.
According to the book, between 12:30 and 12:45 they walked almost a kilometer to the bridge. Dick went up to a police officer and offered to pray for the injured. The officer told him the drivers of the other two cars were fine, and that the man in the red car was dead.
Dick said later that he felt God was asking him to pray for that man. The officer warned him that what he was going to see was horrible. Dick, who had been a medic in Vietnam, crawled in through the back of the car, without taking off the tarp. He put his hand on Don’s shoulder and prayed. At times he cried, and at times he sang hymns.
As he was singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” he heard another voice.
Step 7
Shortly after 1:15 p.m. · He has a pulse again · Don’s account
Don comes to singing a hymn, and a paramedic finds a pulse
The first thing Don remembers when he came back is that he was singing that hymn and someone was singing with him. And that someone was squeezing his hand hard.
According to the book, Dick got out of the car and went to tell the paramedics that the man was alive. They didn’t believe him. They told him they were waiting for the justice of the peace. Dick threatened to lie down on the bridge if they didn’t go and look. A paramedic lifted the tarp, felt for a pulse in his right arm, and found one.
To get him out of the car, they sent to Huntsville, about 50 kilometers away, for a tool to cut through the metal. Dick kept praying beside him until they put him in the ambulance.
A very long recovery was beginning.
Step 8
January 1989 to 1991 · Don’s account
He spends 105 days in a Houston hospital and waits almost two years to talk about heaven
An ambulance took him to two rural clinics and to the hospital in Huntsville. He reached Hermann Hospital in Houston at 6:20 p.m., six and a half hours after the crash. That night he had surgery that lasted eleven hours. He spent 12 days in the ICU and then 105 days at St. Luke’s Hospital. According to the book, the doctors were surprised that he had no head injury at all.
Almost a year later, Don told people at Dick’s church that he remembered Dick praying and squeezing his hand. Over lunch, Dick’s wife, Anita, told him that could not have happened. Dick was behind him and only touched his shoulder. Don’s right hand was on the floor of the car, far from where Dick was. Don believes that hand was an angel’s.
Don writes that he told no one about heaven until almost two years after the accident. He told his best friend, pastor David Gentiles, when Gentiles asked him what he had learned.
Fifteen years after the accident, he told it in a book.
Step 9
2004 onward · Don’s account and the press
90 Minutes in Heaven becomes a bestseller and is made into a movie
In 2004, Don published the book 90 Minutes in Heaven with the writer Cecil Murphey. It became a bestseller. The movie came out in 2015.
Dick Onarecker never saw the book. He died of a heart attack before it came out. According to the book, he died in 2001. His wife, Anita, says he died in 1996.
In 2014, a Baptist newspaper asked Anita about the story. She answered in writing that she could not speak about Don’s experience. But she said she could vouch that a long time passed before Dick prayed and before emergency help arrived. And she said she could confirm that a prayer was answered in a miraculous way that day.
The question remains: what can be checked about those 90 minutes?
Do you have to be close to death to have an NDE?
In Don’s case, we don’t know what state his body was in during those minutes. That is why a study that looked at exactly this in other people is useful.
In 1990, three researchers at the University of Virginia reviewed the medical records of 58 people who described an NDE. Most of them believed they had been close to death.
| According to their medical records | People | Saw a very bright light |
|---|---|---|
| Had really been close to death | 28 | 21 |
| Had not been close to death | 30 | 12 |
What these figures don’t tell you
- The experiences were very similar in both groups. The same share of people in both groups said they had left their body. The tunnel and believing they were dying came up a little more often among those who had really been close to death, but the difference was so small it could have been chance. Only two things stood out among those who had really been close to death. They more often saw a bright light, and they more often said they were thinking more clearly.
- These are people who wrote to the university on their own. Half of them did so seven years or more after their experience.
- Almost one in four had been in an accident, like Don. The study doesn’t look at the people who had an accident separately, so it says nothing about those cases in particular.
So an NDE alone doesn’t tell you how close someone came to dying. Don’s case stands out for what he said happened on the bridge, not for anything that can be measured.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Don Piper?
Don Piper is a Baptist pastor from Texas. In January 1989, a prison truck crushed his car on a bridge. According to his book, he was taken for dead for about 90 minutes. He told the story in 90 Minutes in Heaven (2004), which was made into a movie in 2015.
Was Don Piper dead for 90 minutes?
There is no way to know. According to his book, the paramedics could not find a pulse and did not resuscitate him. But the ambulance report and the medical records from that day have never been published. Without them, there is no way to know whether he had no pulse or whether they just couldn’t find it.
Is the story in 90 Minutes in Heaven true?
The accident is real. The book includes photos of the car and of the scene. What Don Piper went through is known only from his own account. He does not say he saw anything in this world that could be checked. Here we explain what can be checked.
Who was Dick Onarecker, the pastor who prayed for Don Piper?
Dick Onarecker was a Baptist pastor from Klein, near Houston. According to Don Piper’s book, he crawled into the crushed car and prayed and sang hymns for him. Piper came to singing with him. Dick died of a heart attack before the book came out, in 1996 according to his widow and in 2001 according to the book.
Where this story comes from
The book
- Don Piper with Cecil Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven (Revell, 2004). We read the Spanish edition, 90 minutos en el cielo (Revell)Buy the book
Press
- Houston Chronicle, Richard Vara, on Don Piper’s return to the bridge of the accident, March 26, 2005Read
- Houston Chronicle, Maggie Galehouse, on the movie and with the 1989 photo, September 10, 2015Read
- Baptist News Global, Bob Allen, with Anita Onarecker’s answers, June 19, 2014Read
Learn more
- What is a near-death experience?Read
- What does science say about near-death experiences?Read
- How we check each storyRead
Our archive
- The full reading of the book, in the Spanish edition, and the search for the 1989 press coverage, as of October 29, 2026
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