The angels here below

It is by far the most difficult thing imaginable, for one’s child to be called away, to live with the angels until you, the parent, can make it up there to take over one day. I’ve never experienced this but have no doubt.

When a child dies after a long illness there are the hospital people to thank because they work so hard to save little lives. There is time, perhaps, to prepare. That’s what some people tell me but I don’t know that it’s ever quantifiable. Pain cuts deep regardless of the weapon, at leas that’s what I suppose.

When the end for a child comes as a result of accident or other bodily insult, the people who help out can make up a long list. That was the case on Jan. 30, when a little girl named Amyri Windham was carried up by the angels after she was struck by a pickup in a Thibodaux strip mall.

The truck’s driver, identified in the police report as Ryan C. Lirette, has to date been charged with no crime. Thibodaux Police said Lirette passed a breathalyzer and that they are awaiting the standard blood test reports regarding drug use, but there are no indications that such is the case. He must now live with the horror, which the investigation so far reveals was likely not his fault. Children run. They sometimes run or walk where we wish they didn’t.

The little girl was found in a supine position behind the driver’s side front tire of the orange and white 2005 Silverado.

Up until the incident occurred, that Friday morning was routine for everyone involved. And a lot of people, as you shall read here, were involved.

Little Amyri was laid to rest at the Moses Baptist Church, after a service conducted by the Rev. Lloyd Jones. Amyri had only seen two years on this earth.

The narrative in the police report tells a sad story. It is repeated here because we don’t always get to tell the whole thing, the work the special people do, because in itself this is usually not news.

Police Officer Jason Naquin, in the report, says he responded to the parking area near the Dollar Tree store at Rienzi Plaza, a place where moms and dads and kids go every day.

At 10:10 a.m. the officer laid eyes on the little victim, and was told by a bystander that she had checked for a pulse and found one that was faint.

As he waited for more help Naquin checked further, but to no avail. Naquin and the bystander moved Amyri a foot away from where she was found, to make for more room, and a frantic effort began. Naquin did the chest compressions as he has been taught, and the bystander, whose name was not in the report, did the breathing.

“The breaths were not getting into her lungs,” Naquin wrote in the report. “I felt again for a pulse but could not find one.”

An off-duty officer, Cpl. Joseph Gustafson, offered his help as the additional black-and-whites arrived with their blue flashing lights.

Cpl. Lance Percle, Police Officer 1st Class. Paul Thibodeaux, Police Officer Allie Facheaux and Capt. Jamie Fontenot went to work. They secured the area so that the investigation could begin; the bystanders were moved away. With all this going on there were the cries ands wails of the toddler’s mother, the ones that have emitted from every mother since Eve, the ones that speak to the loss and the powerlessness and the anger of it all.

Unit 33 from Acadian Ambulance Service got there next and the paramedics, Melanie Boudreaux and Seth Scott, did their very best to find evidence of a heart beat but there was none to be found.

The firefighters were next, with the big tarps that keep the business of dealing with the dead as private as possible. Mark Goldman from the Lafourche Coroner’s Office was there too. He wasn’t on duty but he heard and he came, before anyone even asked him to. He had work to do that does not bear retelling here. The firefighters made the blood go away.

“It bothers me but someone has to do it. You try not to think about it,” said Goldman, who has seen his share of tragedy cup close and personal.

The cops, the medics, the investigators, a lot of them have kids and they see these things, and they try not to bring them home. But they see them. They do the work. Amyri has met the angels, the ones in heaven, when they came to help her up. And she no doubt somehow knows that the other angels – the ones in the uniforms and turnout coats who walk among every day – were there for her as well. They’re there for all of us. And while they never ask for thanks, it’s fair to say that they don’t get thanked enough.