The tragic death of her four-year-old fraternal twins left a Florida mom hoping her loss would help others “in some way” as she warned others about the fatal circumstances.
On Saturday, Aug. 26, a family of six in Jacksonville, Florida discovered that the two youngest members had suffocated to death inside their bedroom toy chest. Little more than a week after, Sadie Myers took to Facebook on behalf of her husband Don Starr, their two surviving sons, and vulnerable lives everywhere to memorialize Aurora and Kellan and potentially protect other kids from their fate.
“Not many will know the pain of losing two children at the same time and losing them in a way that makes no sense,” the mother began in her lengthy, heartfelt post, “but I have to believe that something in this universe chose them specifically, maybe to protect them from some future tragedy, or maybe because their souls were too perfect for this world, I don’t know, but everything in me hopes that I will know someday, because not knowing hurts too bad to keep living.”
According to her account of the events, her husband had put the children to bed Friday before he himself retired for the night and she believed, based on past experience, that early the next morning, “the twins woke each other up and decided they wanted to play in the room rather than sleep, they do this a lot…and then they usually fall asleep in some weird place in their room…”
“Friday night the weird place they decided to snuggle up and go back to sleep was in their cedar toy chest that we use to store all their stuffed animals,” the mother went on.
“Sometime during their sleep one of them must have moved or kicked during a dream and it caused the lid of this old wooden cedar chest to close… Something I did not know and I’m sure many others don’t know is that most wooden toy chests once close are AIR TIGHT and also sound proof,” Myers’ explained. “So as they slept, all snuggled up together, they slowly ran out of oxygen within a couple of hours and passed away.”
“They never even knew it was happening,” she said.
When the children hadn’t come out of the room in the morning, the father went to check on them and their visible absence set the family searching in a panic. One of her older sons discovered the children in the chest and said, “Mommy I found them! They are so silly just sleeping in the toy box.”
First Coast News reported that paramedics and police had arrived at the scene around noon and Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Lt. Adam Blinnat detailed, “Life-saving efforts were performed, but sadly both children were pronounced deceased.”
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, between 1996 and 2014 at least 34 children had died in incidents involving toy chests. Furthermore, over 21,500 such chests have been recalled since 2005 because of risks of entrapment, injury, lead poisoning, and strangulation.
Myers detailed how she told her older sons how lucky they all were for “the gift of having the twins with [them] for even such a short time,” and she ended her memorial stating, “…I hope if you have a toy box like this that you destroy it immediately!!! again, please keep me and my family in your hearts and prayers, because this will never get easier for us.”
A crowdfunding page had been established by the mother’s sister who stated, “Please help me raise whatever it takes for these two amazing parents and their two remaining children to be able to grieve together without worrying about going back to work right away or stressing about coming up with money to pay bills or final expenses, please.”
As of Wednesday morning, donors had raised more than $23,000 toward a $10,000 goal.
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Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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