Erin Wood recalls her husband Brian as a selfless man who was counting the days until the couple welcomed the birth of their first child. And while she is filled with grief, she is equally filled with gratitude to him for sacrificing his life to save two others — hers and that of their unborn baby.

The Vancouver, B.C., couple were traveling through Washington state to visit family Friday when an oncoming Chevy Blazer weaved wildly. As the car hurtled at them head-on, Brian braked hard and swerved to the right, ensuring he would take the brunt of the crash as the Blazer slammed into them.

“It’s pretty obvious if you look at the car that if it would have been a head-on crash, we both would have been killed, right along with our baby,” Erin Wood told Carl Quintanilla on TODAY Monday from Vancouver.

“He definitely saved us. He made that choice, and I’m thankful for that.”

It was a life cut short for Brian, 33, lead designer for Relic Entertainment, renowned in the computer gaming world for such games as “Company of Heroes.” He would have been celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary with Erin on Friday; instead, she and family are planning his funeral for Sunday.

Drugs in oncoming car
According to police, the driver of the other vehicle was trying to take off her sweater while her front-seat passenger took the wheel. Washington State Trooper Mark Francis told NBC News that the vehicle crossed over the center line while the driver and passenger “jerked the wheel, overreacted and overcompensated. [They] steered back to the left and lost control, and that’s when they came head-on into the husband and wife.”

Brian Wood was killed instantly, and two male passengers in the vehicle driven by Jordyn Weichert were ejected from the back and killed. Police found heroin, cocaine, marijuana and syringes in the Weichert vehicle, and a .25-caliber pistol was found on the body of one of the men killed. The Province newspaper in British Columbia reported all four occupants of the other vehicle were well known to local law enforcement.

msnbc.com