good lord....

[BigJon]

Read this... (http://angelcities.com/members/jmh3/story.html)

:(
Broke my heart...

I have nothing else to say...

[Pinkgirl36]

:neartears :neartears :neartears

[Kim]

That's it....my kids are never leaving the house again. :bawl:

[Nanotech9]

i didnt read it cause most internet sob stories aren't true.

just like the SPAM emails about the little kids that need help blah blah blah.

[attgig]

Originally posted by Nanotech9
i didnt read it cause most internet sob stories aren't true.

just like the SPAM emails about the little kids that need help blah blah blah.

Well, they really weren't asking for anything....
they were just telling their story and urging people to be careful with their kids in stores.

:(

poor family

[whitak24]

DF, here's the story
(reader's digest version: cute 4-year-old girl, much loved by her parents, is in Home Depot when a forklift drops a bunch of countertops on her head, killing her)



Janessa’s Story

Janessa was born on Thursday, June 27, 1996 at 5:10 pm to Julie Fikstad (Horner) and Matthew Cunningham. She was born 7 weeks premature and delivered cesarean section, along with a $26,000 dollar hospital bill. She suffered from Apnea spells at first, but was found to be a healthy baby who could survive. Two weeks later she came home. Janessa and I moved in with my parent’s shortly after she was born. Her biological dad and I were living together but had not put our problems behind us enough to work it out for the baby. We didn’t want to get married for the wrong reasons and figured it would just eventually work itself out. So, my parent’s helped raise her for the first year of her life. She filled a void in their heart with pure joy. They had an empty spot because they lost their son four years before Janessa was born, to suicide. I too felt this love for her like no other love I had felt on this Earth. I prayed and prayed that God would just let her live for a little while. And He did just that…I am forever grateful for the years I did have her for. She gave me life, like oxygen. She was what I lived for, dreamed for, and she was my life.

Janessa lived on to be a chubby healthy baby. She was very smart and never seemed hindered by being premature. Later she went on to have tubes put in her ears and dental work done on her teeth. Both of these surgeries required anesthesia. She recovered and made it through both surgeries.

When Janessa was 8 months old, I started dating her adopted dad, Virgil Horner. Janessa liked him a lot when she was a baby. At that age she didn’t like very many males, except for her Grampie. So, I was very impressed by this. Later, we both started going to church together, and gave our lives to Jesus. We then, married three months later. We raised Janessa in a Christian home environment, put her in a Christian pre-school, and read her bible stories almost every night. She was dedicated to the Lord with her little sister, Hannah. Janessa was two years old then, and received her first little pink New Testament bible. She loved that bible! At two years old, she also learned to pray.

Janessa lived on to be a sweet little girl. Who loved all animals and made friends easily. She loved nature and she had an incredible zest for life. It’s no wonder she always wanted to do everything “now” and be on center stage because she knew her time on this Earth would run out. To know her, was to love her, by all who knew her. She had it all brains, beauty and personality! She also was a very assertive, yet a pleasant mannered little girl. We always joked that she would be first woman president.

She enjoyed being a big sister. She was very protective of her little sister, Hannah. She was always so funny about the sibling spats they would get into. One time she hit Hannah on the head, and her dad asked her “Did you just hit Hannah?” and she replied, “No I didn’t hit her, I just spanked her on the head!” She was very creative. She named our cat “Hockey”. And the day that she died she picked a purple pansy from the neighbor’s flowerbed and named it “Tickle”. She was always doing things that were original. She was also very proud to be a “Mommy’s helper”. She always tried hard to please us, even though she was the typical kid who hated to clean her room. But dishes, laundry, vacuuming, and other chores were always fun to her. She enjoyed helping others and she never looked down on people. She was everyone’s friend no matter who they were. She was a good example to all of us.

She amazed us at how well she understood Jesus and death. When she was just two and a half she went to church on an Easter Sunday. She came out of her class after the service and exclaimed “Mommy, Jesus died, and he had owes, but he came back to life!” Then, one time my mother took Janessa out to the cemetery with her to take her son some flowers. Janessa asked my mom what happened to him, and my mother told her that he died. She said “Oh, the poor thing.” with such sorrow. It was truly amazing that she understood all of this at such a young age.

Once her daddy asked her how she got into mommy’s tummy and she replied “Jesus put me in there.” She always was very close to God. She died 3 days before her dad’s birthday and she wanted to make him cookies so badly. I told her she had to wait a few days, that it wasn’t his birthday yet. She was so upset that we didn’t make cookies, almost as if she knew that she wouldn’t be here to make those cookies for her daddy. Then, the night before she died I had come down with the stomach flu or dehydration from being out in the sun most of the day. When my husband came home that evening, he had asked me what was wrong, and I replied, “I just feel really yucky and weak.” Janessa looked up at me and said, “You are weak, Mommy, but HE is strong!” Again, she was sending me a message. Later that evening my husband had asked her if she accepted Jesus as her savior and she said, “Yes.” without any hesitation. On the day that she died, just one month from being four years old; she came out of Sunday school class at church with a paper that said “God Loves Us!” She said, “Look Mommy, God loves us!” She said it with so much excitement. It didn’t read God loves me, it said us. This too was another message from her. Even though we were about to encounter the biggest tragedy of life ever, God still loves us! Janessa always told her daddy that she was going to have angel wings someday. And her daddy would say, “I don’t know, Nessie. Maybe?” She always replied, “I will daddy, I will.”

It was a warm spring Sunday, on May 28th, Memorial Day Weekend in fact, when my husband and I had gotten the girls ready and headed off for church. It was just two days before Janessa’s pre-school graduation. We came home and had lunch, and laid Hannah down for her nap. After Hannah’s nap we decided to go to the new Disney Dinosaur movie. This was the first movie that Hannah and Janessa got to go see together. Hannah was only 21 months at the time. They had so much fun, sharing their gummy bears and popcorn. They both had to share a seat; they didn’t weigh enough to keep the seat from flipping back up by themselves.

So, we left and decided to go to our local Home Depot store that had just opened last April. We had bought a home that was built in 1953 and needed quite a bit of updating. So, we decided we would go in there and get some ideas for the house and pick up a few things for the garden. Only, it didn’t happen that way at all. We went to the Home Depot, I can still see us pulling in on the East side of the parking lot, and getting the girls out of the van. Janessa jumped in my arms and I carried her like the little baby that she will always be to me in my heart. Virgil had Hannah and we proceeded into the store. Janessa was almost four years old, and we had taught her that as long as she was good and stayed right by us that she didn’t have to ride in the cart. She learned that she was to hold onto the side of the cart when we asked her to stay right beside us. We started to go through the store looking at kitchen cabinets, sinks, and faucets. Then, we proceeded down an aisle where all the screen doors were. We were talking about which one we would like to buy down the road and which style and color. Then, we came to the end of the aisle and we went to turn down the next aisle. There was a male employee and a female customer standing in the aisle that we were trying to go down. She had a long bed cart, and on the other side was a display of some sort. We noticed she was waiting for a forklift to get down some kind of lumber for her. She came over to us and replied that she would be out of our way in just a minute. Then, we waited for about 45 seconds, watching the forks go under the lumber. Then, he went in a second time and proceeded to bring down the lumber. We saw the lumber start to slide our direction, but we thought that we were far enough away. We were standing a good 15-20 feet outside of the yellow tape barricade. Once the lumber started hitting the floor and crashing into echoes that will never leave my memory, we started to move the girls out of the way. I grabbed onto the cart where Hannah was sitting and started to pull her back. Janessa was standing next to the cart and was just getting ready to run towards me as I was coming towards her. Then, before I knew it pieces of 6-12 foot lumber we’re flying through the air end over end. Two or more of the pieces hit the back of Janessa and crushed her into the concrete floor. I knelt down to pull the pieces off of her and at the same time Hannah was tipped over in her cart from the lumber sliding on the floor and hitting the wheels of the cart. Virgil went to get Hannah while I was pulling the pieces of lumber off of Janessa. I grabbed her bruised little body and screamed “Janessa!” realizing she was unconscious.

I laid her down on the floor, too scared to check for pulse or breathing. She was already bruised all over her body, her face, and one eye swollen purple. I stood up and started pacing and screaming “My baby!” I had just gotten CPR certified for my job last January and I was in such a state of shock and panic that I was too scared to help her. I just freaked out thinking what if I send her into cardiac arrest and make it worse. Luckily, some of the employees in the store knew CPR and began to necessitate her. She was breathing very shallow and had a pulse. Everyone in the store kept reassuring me that she was going to be ok. But, I knew that she wasn’t. I just could feel that her spirit had already left this world.

continued.....

[whitak24]

the rest of it



It felt like hours before the ambulance got there and when it did, they wouldn’t let me ride with her. So, an employee offered to drive us to the hospital since we were in such a state of shock. We arrived at our local hospital and I started making all the phone calls to the grandparent’s. The doctors let us in to see her for a minute, and then put us back in the waiting room. Some of the doctors and nurses came in the room, all looking devastated. They said well, “Kids are resilient, and she might make it through this.” They wanted to have her life flighted to another hospital to see if they could run some tests on her brain and if there was anything they could do, it would be better to do the surgery there. I knew that there was probably not a thing they could do for her. I’d seen brain damage all too well before when my brother died of a gun shot wound to the head 8 years earlier. Still, I had hope…

Again, we could not go with her, so we had to drive a very long two hours to the other hospital. She went into cardiac arrest on the helicopter, but they revived her and she made it to St. Alphonsaus Medical Center. When we got there, they had already done the cat scans and had her in ICU. A doctor came in and put a serum in her eyes and ears to see if the brain responded. But it didn’t. A couple of 100 lb counter tops had hit her in the back of the head, splitting a main vein in her brain. She was bleeding severely in her little head.

They had us go to another waiting room area. The doctor came in and said “She is brain dead, there is nothing or anyone else can do for her.” I stared so deeply in her eyes thinking, “God can, God please, you can!” Then she replied with some hope, “But there is one thing you can do, and that is to donate her organs.” Virgil and I discussed it, and we knew it was the right thing to do. If we were the parent’s or family praying and wishing so badly that someone could help our loved one survive, we would want this for them. So, we did it. I am so glad that we did it now. They couldn’t salvage her heart from all the damage that was done to it, but she helped out with the eyes, kidneys, heart valves, and such. Six people benefited from her precious life. We receive letters often about who she has helped and what a difference it made. Those letters help pick me up on a bad day. Her hospital bill was roughly around another $26,000 dollars. It’s very ironic that it cost just as much to give her life, as it did to take it away.

The next morning I dreaded calling her biological dad. I couldn’t believe I had to tell him that his only little girl was dead. He lives 12 hours away, and we had just visited him last November. Janessa never questioned why she had two daddies and about 6 grandparents. She understood that Matt wasn’t Hannah’s daddy. She was very mature in spirit. He was devastated. Over the last year we were just starting to become friends and get over all the stupid arguments we once had. Janessa and Matt had just started bonding and we all thought they had a lifetime to do it in. I wish now we could take back all the juvenile arguments and would have realized how important it was for us to get along.

We’ve had many memorials donated in her name and I am grateful to those people who took the time to remember her. We’ve also had many signs from Janessa. My mom’s cat had just “one” kitten on Janessa’s birthday. Just one month after she had died. I had asked Janessa for a sign on Hannah’s birthday and that same mama cat died on Hannah’s birthday. It wasn’t necessarily the sign I was looking for, but I think she’s trying to tell us something.

Matt’s mother, Linda also had a sign. She knew that Janessa loved purple pansies, and she suddenly had them growing through out her flower beds. Then, one day she noticed there was one growing out in the middle of the yard. I can see Janessa saying “No, that one goes in the grass, not in the dirt.” She had her own style of doing things. So, Grandma Linda planted it next to her memorial rose bush for Janessa. My mom and I also had all kinds of flowers growing in the flower beds at our homes that weren’t there the year before. And this past summer, there seemed to be a ton of those big yellow butterflies in the neighborhood.

This memorial page is dedicated to my precious “Nessie”, (Janessa). She will forever live in my heart and one magical day I will meet her again up in Heaven. She will be helping Jesus prepare a place for us, and be waiting with open arms.

We love you sweetheart!

[mojo]

Originally posted by Nanotech9
i didnt read it cause most internet sob stories aren't true.

just like the SPAM emails about the little kids that need help blah blah blah. for what it's worth, snopes didnt have anything on it.

sad story :(

[Markel]

Originally posted by DarkFury
A 4 year old girl gets crushed to death at a Home Depot in 2000? That would have made headlines somewhere...
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_010316_warehouse.html?subsection_id=117&internal_id=315 has a mention of this incident.

[whitak24]

Originally posted by Markel

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_010316_warehouse.html?subsection_id=117&internal_id=315 has a mention of this incident.
good google work markel :)

it is a sad, unfortunate story.....

[Memo]

Yep, **** happens. I just don't know why people post this kind of stuff on the web. It's their personal problems and sure I guess they want to get the message out, but I don't really know how spreading this one the internet really makes a difference. Making a website in tribute of a person just seems so...trivial.

[molecularfire]

Did anyone else get a flashing pop-up window after they closed the window to BigJon's link?

[welfareloser]

Originally posted by molecularfire
Did anyone else get a flashing pop-up window after they closed the window to BigJon's link?

yep, me too.

for pete's sake, they can memorialize their dead baby girl any way they want. if you don't like sad stories, don't read em. you knew it was gonna be sad before i got to the punchline, and you coulda stopped... i mean seriously, do you really have to assert a negative opinion about this? why shouldn't they have? because you dint want to see it? because it's hurting someone somewhere?

spreading it on the internet might make a difference. i was aware that accidents at lumber and hardware and warehouse stores like sam's club are getting more common... workers aren't careful, and nobody's forcing them to be careful yet. i don't take my kid to lowes. it's a good message to get out.

[mojo]

Originally posted by UT Memo
Yep, **** happens. I just don't know why people post this kind of stuff on the web. It's their personal problems and sure I guess they want to get the message out, but I don't really know how spreading this one the internet really makes a difference. Making a website in tribute of a person just seems so...trivial. it could be trivial...but so are most thoughts that the average person has on a daily basis.

a lot of people are comforted by "positive thoughts" and "well wishing" of others. a lot of people will agree that "good vibrations" exist...or that when you think well of someone, it actually means more than just the immediate thought.

[Grimm]

Originally posted by welfareloser

i don't take my kid to lowes. it's a good message to get out.
What? Are you saying it's a bad idea to take a kid into a warehouse? An industrial environment is bad for a kid? Who knew? :rolleyes:
Next thing you know they are going to be telling us that toddlers shouldn't be playing with power tools!

[mojo]

Originally posted by Grimm

What? Are you saying it's a bad idea to take a kid into a warehouse? An industrial environment is bad for a kid? Who knew? :rolleyes:
Next thing you know they are going to be telling us that toddlers shouldn't be playing with power tools! children shouldn't be removed from their protective covering until they are 18

[whitak24]

Originally posted by mojo
children shouldn't be removed from their protective covering until they are 18
i didn't get to leave my protective bubble (a la john travolta) until i was 21 and a half :heh: :heh:

[Markel]

Originally posted by mojo
children shouldn't be removed from their protective covering until they are 18
I like the idea about putting them in a barrel with a hole. Up until the time they are teenagers, you supply them with food and water through the hole. When they become teenagers, you plug up the hole!

[welfareloser]

Originally posted by Grimm

What? Are you saying it's a bad idea to take a kid into a warehouse? An industrial environment is bad for a kid? Who knew? :rolleyes:
Next thing you know they are going to be telling us that toddlers shouldn't be playing with power tools!

heh... speaking of which, my friend's kid, evilredhead, severed all the muscles behind her eye falling on a TOY screwdriver... *shudder*

(utterly successful surgery, it's fine now...)

it's ahrd to let your kid do things like ride a skateboard... cross a street... leave the house...

[attgig]

Originally posted by UT Memo
Yep, **** happens. I just don't know why people post this kind of stuff on the web. It's their personal problems and sure I guess they want to get the message out, but I don't really know how spreading this one the internet really makes a difference. Making a website in tribute of a person just seems so...trivial.


Originally posted by mojo
it could be trivial...but so are most thoughts that the average person has on a daily basis.



actually, I was thinking that most stuff in the internet are trivial :P
how many 'personal' pages are there that are sooo trivial that the value of it being on the net can be easily questioned?...
a LOT (including my page :P)

oh, and yeah, how about the stuff posted on these forums :P lotta people (including me) talk about **** happening in their lives too..
give the family a break.

[BigJon]

Originally posted by DarkFury
Ummmm...ok.

I gotta go with folks on here who are saying that this might not have really happened...

A 4 year old girl gets crushed to death at a Home Depot in 2000? That would have made headlines somewhere...

Home Depot woulda been up to its ears in a lawsuit since one of its forklife drivers caused the accident.

Talk about a "hard knock life"... she didn't have a chance. Yeah, good story, but I dunno from this if it is "real" or not.

Found it linked as the featured complaint for Home Depot on the complaint station.

complaint station (http://www.complaintstation.com)

Seems to me to be real.

*edit* didn't read far enough...looks like you found out it was real.