Your childhood stories of that kid who got killed

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

Jimmy - he was one of the few people who didn’t make Junior High a living hell for me.
He was the only boy on our school gymnastics team, and smaller than the other boys.

Some days when my dad was very late picking me up, and I was still waiting when Jimmy left gymnastic practice, he would offer to wait with me. I was incredibly shy, and told him “no that’s okay,” just so I wouldn’t have to have a conversation with him. He walked home.
That day, my dad showed up just as Jimmy was coming over to me. He just smiled and waved.

The next day at school, I heard that he had been hit by a car while walking home from school. Then, it turned out that he had been hit by an elderly neighbor of mine, who later killed himself.

122

Nancy had been my good friend from middle school onward; by the time we were in high school she and I were among a larger set of friends (friends I still keep in contact with, 30 years later, even though we’re spread out all over the country).

While swimming in one of our friend’s backyard pool the summer before our senior year, Nancy had some type of seizure in the pool. Our other friend Cathy, a lifeguard, immediately got her out and the ambulance was there in under five minutes. Still, she was rendered brain-dead. She was hospitalized for a few years and finally was in a nursing home. She died the summer after I graduated from college.

Lenny was also our friend, a smart guy but from the “wrong side of the tracks,” which never bothered any of us because we liked him so much. His mother had been a barmaid and even owner of bars around our small town for years. Lenny got into the family business in a way, and one night sold beer out the back door to a high-school boy. That boy was killed driving drunk in an accident that very night. Not long afterward, Lenny shot and killed himself while at his grave site.

I still miss both of them.

123

I didn’t know Bill personally (he was some years ahead of me in school), but his family was well known in town. Bill and his father liked to restore classic cars. Bill was working on one of these cars, which was up on a rack. Something slipped - the car, the rack, or both - and Bill was crushed and killed when the car fell.

I can’t remember the girl’s name, so let’s call her Alice. She and a friend went to play tennis at a local tennis court. The nets at this court were the type that can be tightened or loosened by means of a crank mechanism. As it happened, the net on their court was loose, and Alice tried to tighten it with the crank. She tightened the net, but then lost her grip on the crank, which then spun backward due to the tension on it. The rapidly spinning crank struck her in the side of the head, hard, and she died of the injury.

124

I don’t have too many of these stories, fortunately.

Chris was more my brother’s friend than mine, but we did hang out together. Leukemia got him in his senior year of high school – four “unrelated” types of leukemia at the same time, allegedly. He was fine, an athlete…then felt tired, went to the doctor, and was dead in two weeks. IMHO that’s too long to be merciful and too short to do any bucket-list kind of things…a bad break.

Jimmy was a high-school guy I didn’t know; he was sitting on the hood of a car that was slowly cruising around the school parking lot, the typical sort of dumb yelling celebration after some sporting event. Somehow he fell off and struck his head on pavement and he died.

There was a guy my first year of college who seemed nice. I was friendly with him although I can no longer remember his name. He never returned from Christmas break and the rumor was that he had put a shotgun in his mouth, but I don’t know anything official.

It was after college, but my sister-in-law’s little sister was barely 20 or 21, I don’t recall, when she was driving to church for choir practice in the weeks before Christmas. Her car slid on the ice, spun, and she slid broadside into an oncoming van. The impact wasn’t that destructive but the angle was bad, and the momentum of her head moving sideways broke her neck, killing her.

When she did not return home, her father drove out in the snow and ice looking for her, and found the scene with the ambulance flashing and the police not letting anyone approach…he could see his daughter’s car. It must have been horrible. Her parents were in misery for a long, long time.

She had just gotten married less than a year before, but she was very young and just basically a kid sister, still working at a Hair Cuttery. It’s pointless and foolish of me, but I always tip well after a haircut, in her memory.

125

My brother used to date a girl who was fanatical about closing kitchen cabinet doors. She told me that she got it from her mother, who would not allow cabinet doors to remain open because a childhood friend of hers had hit her head on the corner of an open cabinet door - the corner got her hard, right on the soft spot on the temple, and she actually died as a result.

126

There’s another one I recall–it happened in the 3rd grade and involved my best friend’s stepbrother. He shot himself; the investigators decided it was an accident. They had the funeral on my friend’s birthday and my mother told me not to say anything about it to her because it might upset her.

Later I heard some boys at school laughing about it and saying that the stepbrother had yelled for help but when she found him and saw the blood she’d said “That’s just ketchup.”

127

Michael Osterman. He was my age, and we were in the same day care. I was seven, and he drowned while I was away on vacation with my grandparents. My mom told me over the phone. I was never sure of whether or not that actually happened or I misunderstood until about five minutes ago, when I googled his name and found a news report of his drowning. He wasn’t exactly a close friend, so there wasn’t much beyond that. . .but obviously I remember his name twenty years later.

128

Jason and I went all through elementary school together. After 6th grade his family was transferred to Hawaii. About 6 months into the school year a friend of his found a gun and Jason was accidently shot. He was 13.

Another longtime elementary school friend, Misha, had an undetected heart ailment and died suddenly at home in front of his younger brother and sister. I think we were in middle school, so 13/14ish.

129

My god why did I choose to read this thread at work… Fighting back tears…

I am fortunate to report that I cannot recall any tragic deaths in my childhood.

130

There was one more. The family that lived in the backyard behind mine as I was growing up, had kids my brothers and sisters ages, but none mine. I was a tag-a-long kid and fairly well teased/despised by that whole family. It beat playing alone.

Their youngest daughter was 3 years older than me and liked nothing better than sitting on me, yanking on my hair, and calling me words I didn’t even know yet. Now, we were never close, especially not once I knew what the words she said meant. I think I was 10 when I heard that she was riding her bike in NYC and was somehow run into a curb by a car. It was before bike helmet laws & I heard she went over the handlebars and into the curb head first, dying instantly.

131

I grew up with daryll , he was like a brother, he sold drugs - he decided to sell on someone elses block ; although they were close friends the boy got angry. daryll pulled his gun out as the boy was walking away ; the boy did a quick draw - turned and shot daryll 5 times including a head shot and began shooting at my cousin who was with daryll as he ran away he miss - daryll died he was 17.

my other cousin got upset about the situation and wanted revenge. he caught up with the “friend” that murdered daryll and he sat in the car with his brother. my cousin shot at the car killing daryll’s killers little brother. he died- he was 17 ; he and daryll had the same birthday, same death date and their funerals were on the same day.

that summer was a non-stop war i was sent away with an aunt to stay from danger. i returned

dary’ll’s killer had been killed by my family members along with all of his brothers and all of his uncles only one who mad it was young fellow who is wheel chair bound. their grandmom now only had neices and granddaughters - the men are all dead

daryll was gon and my cousin who ran was “caught slipping” and shot to death - he was 26

tht summer hit me hard :frowning:

132

I was thinking the same thing. I never knew any twins in school, and my graduating class was 250 strong.

Justina was in 6th grade with me. She died in a car crash in Indiana when she was 12, her family was on the way to a vacation I believe. Her whole family was in the car, mom dad and little brother, and she was the only one who died. I still remember when someone told me about it, my first reaction was to laugh and tell them to stop messing with me. :frowning:

I actually found out about it during a Girl Scout outing on the weekend, and me and the girl who told me were the only 2 kids in our grade who knew about it on Monday. When we went to school on Monday, Justina’s best friend Krystal was pulled out of 1st period gym class by our PE teacher, who told her about it in the hallway. Her crying still haunts me.

Joe shot himself at age 21. Nobody really knew why. He had a cute girlfriend, track star, was fairly popular, and always seemed happy. His facebook profile is still up and a lot of my old high school acquaintances still have him as a friend. I remember he drank and smoked a lot of weed starting around age 15… maybe he was more depressed than he let on.

Dan, whom I remember as a bully and a grade-A dumbass, had enlisted in the Army. He was 20. He had been drinking with a group of friends and died of a gunshot wound. His friends lied and said he was shot outside a liquor store in Gary. But what actually happened, apparently, was that he got drunk, put on his new flak jacket thinking it was kevlar (and bulletproof), and dared a friend to shoot him in the chest with a shotgun from 5 feet away. They drove him to the hospital but he died overnight.

It was pretty big news at the time. They even shot the windshield of the car they were driving to make their story believable. His friend got charged with reckless homicide and concealing homicide, ended up getting 6 years in jail. It’s still in the Darwin Awards nominee archive, too, apparently.

133

Wow, just remembered. This actually happened a couple years after I left school, but my sister was classmates with a girl named Brittney who was murdered (along with 2 other kids) by a drug dealer who ended up getting a 270 year sentence.

AFAIK she didn’t do drugs, she just hung out with some questionable people.

134

Pat was a nice boy in my freshman theater class. He was diagnosed with leukemia that year and died when we were seniors.

Branda and I went to high school together. Two weeks after graduation, she was killed in a car accident. She and a friend of hers were drinking and driving down country roads after dark when they pulled in front of a tractor-trailer while crossing a four lane highway. Her friend has been mentally disabled for the past thirty years.

At 17, my cousin got a ticket for speeding one night. In the middle of the night, he shot himself in the head with a deer rifle.

Another cousin was born with a number of significant birth defects. She was mildly developmentally disabled, legally blind and wore heavy braces on her legs. She went in for the umpteenth surgery to correct one of these defects at six and never came out of anethesia.

135

And indeed was discussed here.

136

One summer in the 70’s there was my 3rd grade crush, Howard, he used to write me poems and we drew maps to each others houses. He was hit by a car and killed on his bicycle two blocks from my house.

Then in High School there was"Luck", a nickname, for Tammy who dressed like a boy and liked to hang with all the girls. One Friday night after calling friend after friend to talk and not getting a hold of anyone, she took pills and drank beer. OD’d at 18.

Travis a senior in HS and his pregnant 17 yo girlfriend needed their car towed, He thought it would be fun to ride in the car, she sat in the tow truck, he somehow got killed during the trip.

There were several more deaths, Terri 17, a tough girl drop out who I used to be best friends with in elementary school, was shot point blank in the chest by her boyfriend, it was ruled an accident.

The threesome speeding over the Hallandale Beach Blbvd bridge, clip a rail and sail over the edge, a spectacular crash ensued, killed all three 1980 graduates in 1981.

There are more, fires, drugs, cars, murder, sickness - damn the 70’s were cruel.

137

Chus was the firstborn of a well-known family; his father was president of the local soccer team and they lived in a big house in the outskirts of town. There was maybe 1km between their house and the edge of town on that particular road.

One day when we were in 10th grade, his younger sister hopped over from the school across the square. She had forgotten to take her gym bag that morning, could Chus give her a ride on his scooter? And off they went; he only had one helmet, which she wore (back then it was still legal for scooters to carry passengers, the ban was being debated at the time).

The road has a slight S, which truck drivers would often “rectify” - such as the one who ran over Chus and his sister. That driver killed Chus’ body, but also his sister’s happiness (she’s been depressed and blaming herself for his death for 27 years) and the love-of-her-life of my classmate Cari, who was back in town after three years away following her parents’ scandalous divorce; Chus and Cari had been on the path to the altar since our ages were in single digits.

138

A classmate rolled the Mustang that his parents had given him. Of the group of students in it at the time, he was the only one killed.

139

I think this is very sweet and honorable.

Regarding twins — I have sisters who are twins, alive and healthy, thank God. They’re 29 years old and were one of five sets of twins in the same class/age group in the teeny town where we grew up. They and my mother later moved in a much larger town, where they attended an all-girls’ high school. IIRC, there were eight sets of twins in that high school — noteworthy enough that the newspaper did a story on the group of them when my sisters were sophomores.

I grew up in the same cities and knew only two sets of twins — in my age group. I’m much older than they.

140

Jesus, man, that’s rough all 'round. I’m glad you’re okay, and I hope you’re in a safer situation now.