3 Siblings Tragically Pass Away After Being Hit Head-On By A Driver Going The Wrong Direction
Monroe, Louisiana. On December 17th Dawn Simmons, a mom of 9 children, was headed home from Monroe in her SUV with several of her kids on board.
Dawn and her children were in Monroe for a basketball game that Dawn’s 17-year-old son Christopher was playing in.
Christopher ended up winning his game that day, making his team undefeated, and the family began their journey home from Monroe.
Dawn’s 20-year-old daughter Lindy, her 15-year-old daughter Kamryn, and Christopher’s 16-year-old girlfriend Marissa were also in the car on their way home from the game when tragedy struck.
54-year-old John Lundy was behind the wheel of his truck headed the wrong direction down Interstate 49 (he was driving north in the southbound lane) when he slammed head-first into Dawn’s SUV.
John was declared dead on the scene, along with Dawn’s 20-year-old daughter Lindy, who had been driving Dawn’s SUV.
Dawn and the rest of her family were rushed to nearby hospitals with life-threatening injuries.
One of Dawn’s oldest children, Katie DeRouen, received a heartbreaking call from her dad Ray while at a Christmas party; he told her that her mom and siblings had been in a terrible accident.
GoFundMe; pictured above are Kamryn, Christopher, and Lindy
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Katie hopped on a plane to rush to her family’s side, and she quickly realized that her siblings were not at the same hospital that her mom Dawn had been taken to.
After calling around, she found a hospital that had a young woman that had been in a car accident but nobody knew what her name was.
Katie rushed to the hospital to see if this young woman was one of her siblings.
“When the nurse met us, he asked me to describe my sister and informed me that the young female there had expired,” she explained on a GoFundMe page.
“We eventually were led to the room where they unzipped my sweet baby sister’s body bag and revealed to me her perfect face.”
“Yes, that’s Kamryn. I immediately called my dad to let him know it wasn’t Lindy, as we had thought. It was the baby, it was our baby, Kamryn.”
The nurse then helped Katie find Christopher; he had been taken to Bunkie General. When Katie wondered if her brother was alive, the nurse gave her the sad news that he had passed away.
“The world stopped turning when he shook his head no,” Katie said. “No? My baby brother isn’t alive? There are no words to explain that moment. He then proceeded to tell me the young blonde who was driving was still at the scene because they were unable to extract her from the vehicle.”
“And just like that, we went from one sibling didn’t make it, to all three of them not making it.”
The nurse then told Katie that she would have to go to Bunkie General to identify her brother Christopher, so she began driving there.
“I drove, what seemed like 97 million hours to Bunkie. I did not feel like I was in control of my body as I walked into the third hospital of the night,” Katie continued.
“When the nurse unlocked the door and I saw his hair, I knew it was him. My sweet, innocent, perfect baby brother who had his entire life ahead of him, was laying there, lifeless.”
Katie’s mom Dawn suffered from two broken ankles, broken wrists, a fractured sternum, fractured ribs, bleeding in her spleen, a punctured lung, and a lacerated carotid artery. She won’t be able to work normally for at least a year.
Christopher’s girlfriend Melissa broke her femur in the accident and also had bruising on her abdomen.
Katie and her dad Ray were planning to wait to tell Dawn about what happened to Kamryn, Christopher, and Lindy after Dawn was taken out of the ICU.
As Dawn stabilized, she began asking Katie and Ray more questions about the accident and they had to break the news to her that Kamryn, Christopher, and Lindy passed away.
“Lindy had blossomed from a shy, quiet girl to a true beauty, inside and out,” Katie said about her 20-year-old sister.
“She had a radiance or light about her that those who knew her couldn’t explain. She was just hired to be an official photographer for her university.”
“Christopher, or “mom’s angel child” as Katie called him, was always concerned for his mom and worried about her spending even one penny on him,” Katie said about her 17-year-old brother.
“He was goal-oriented and planned to go to college to follow in his big brother’s footsteps. He had a plan to take and retake the ACT until he achieved a score of 32.”
“Kamryn has been described as one of the sweetest people on earth and so caring,” Katie said about her 15-year-old sister.
“She recently grew stronger in her faith, and the positive change in her was noticeable to others.”
“I say all of this to just paint a picture that these are all real people… these are good people. These are the kind of people you would want to have as your relative, neighbor, friend, or coworker.”
It’s an unimaginable tragedy to have to experience, especially so close to the holidays. Katie went from having 8 siblings to 5 in just a single day.
If you would like to donate to Katie’s family to help them cover funeral expenses and medical bills, you can do that here.
More About:Human Interest
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