In the wake of death Mother’s Day crash that killed seven still haunts a year later

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Wobbly crosses and rain-soaked teddy bears form a makeshift memorial in the median of Interstate 95 in Carmel, a solemn reminder that seven people died here a year ago. Among the scattered stumps where trees had to be cut down to remove the wreckage of a rented 2004 Ford Explorer is an anonymous sign that reads, “Angels Gather Here.”

It has been one year since the Mother’s Day crash took the lives of three mothers and four of their children in Maine’s worst accident in 45 years on a public road.

No one keeps track of how many people visit the impromptu memorial, or who adds what small remembrance. But Monday was different, especially for a handful of Etna firefighters who were among the first responders.

“We’re going to clean up the area, put down a new wreath … just do our thing,” Etna Fire Chief Walter Gibbons said Monday afternoon. “It will make me feel good to do that.”

Shortly before 3 p.m. Sunday, May 9, 2004, the driver, Hope Gagnon, 29, of South Portland, tried to pass two cars from the breakdown lane while traveling 103 mph, according to investigators’ reports.

The SUV veered out of control, flipped over twice and landed in a patch of trees between mile markers 170 and 171, killing Gagnon and her six passengers: Gagnon’s three children, Deion Stuart, 8, T’Keyah Stuart, 6, and Ariana Stuart, 4; Kelley Armstrong, 28, and her son Kristian Smith-Armstrong, 4; and Danielle Saint Paulin, 29, who left four children without their mother. All were from South Portland.

Three were ejected from the vehicle. One of the children was found in a tree. Another child was decapitated. Police could confirm that only two people wore seat belts.

The facts haven’t changed, and neither has the impact on those who experienced the tragedy firsthand.

“It’s as vivid today as the first 10 seconds I was there,” Gibbons said last week inside his small office at the fire station. Gibbons and Assistant Fire Chief Lonnie Storen were among the first to answer the 911 call made by a motorist who came upon the accident.

“For a while I slept with the light on in the bedroom to get through it,” Gibbons said. “The images don’t go away.

“If I had it to do all over again, I don’t know if I could do it,” he said.

Maybe because the crash occurred on Mother’s Day, or because four young children were among the victims, or because the tragedy was preventable, this one stands out for police, fire and emergency workers who deal with accidents every day.

“It always makes it worse when you have to tell a family member that their loved one would still be alive if they were doing the speed limit,” Maine State Police Trooper Joshua D’Angelo said last week from his office at the Orono State Police barracks.

D’Angelo, one of 15 state police troopers to respond that day and the primary investigator, said he has never seen anything like it in his eight years as a trooper.

“What stays with me the most would be the destruction,” D’Angelo said. “I’ve been to many crashes, but I’ve never been to one that was that horrific.”

Bob and Linda Armstrong lost their daughter Kelley Armstrong and grandson Kristian Smith-Armstrong that day. The Armstrongs sat down last week at their home in North Yarmouth to reflect on the accident. They have not driven the two hours north to see the memorial. For them, it’s just too difficult.

“We had heard that a lot of people have put flowers and things there, and people said, ‘You have to go up there and see it,'” Bob Armstrong said.

“I just don’t have a desire to go and see where they died,” his wife said. “Maybe someday.”

Utter chaos

Etna firefighters were called for mutual aid on the Sunday of the crash, but sometimes Gibbons and Storen wish they could have stayed home that day.

“We could see the scene ahead of us as we were driving,” Storen said. “When we got there, it took every ounce of energy not to break down.”

“I was looking at this young girl [Ariana Stuart, who was ejected from the vehicle],” Gibbons said.

“She was beautiful, peaceful. There was nothing about her that said she should have been dead.”

D’Angelo arrived shortly after the first responders, not knowing what to expect. The 911 call was vague.

“To describe the scene would be: [It was] just utter chaos,” D’Angelo said. “The first step was just checking for survivors, but obviously there was nothing that could be done.”

The SUV had landed on its roof, cutting some trees in half and stripping large sections of bark from others. A nurse who happened upon the accident before police and fire crews arrived administered CPR to Ariana Stuart.

The little girl couldn’t be saved. None of them could.

The area was littered with eerie reminders that the people in the SUV had been quite alive not too long before – music CDs, clothing, personal effects, food. “The Happy Meals were still warm; the ice in their sodas hadn’t even had time to melt,” Gibbons said.

The story quickly made national headlines, and the Armstrongs saw the grim footage on nighttime television news, before the victims’ names were released the next day.

“I remember watching it and thinking, ‘God that was awful,'” Linda Armstrong said.

The next morning, a uniformed officer and a pastor knocked on the door of the Armstrongs’ home.

“I knew right away something must have been wrong,” Bob Armstrong said. “I couldn’t do much after that.”

“When it comes to you personally, it’s totally different,” his wife added. “At the time that it happened, I remember thinking weeks after, ‘I just want to die’ – you just miss them so much.”

The Armstrongs weren’t given many details of the accident. Weeks later, they received the death certificate for their grandson. The cause of death was listed as asphyxia.

“I would have just assumed it would have been blunt force trauma [like the others] because you knew it would have been quick,” Linda Armstrong said.

“It almost sounded like he was alive at least for a certain period of time,” her husband said.

“I just want to know. I want to know that it was sudden,” Linda Armstrong said. “It took them five hours to turn [the vehicle] over … maybe if they [had] turned it over sooner, one of them would have made it.”

She knew in her heart that it wouldn’t have mattered.

Those same thoughts about turning over the vehicle sooner haunted Walter Gibbons for months.

“To learn that [Kristian Smith-Armstrong] died of asphyxia really bothered me for a long time,” the Etna fire chief said.

“I thought, ‘If we could have just extricated faster, … ‘” he said, his voice trailing off. “The medical examiner said there was no chance we could have saved any of them, but you don’t want to believe that.”

Asking the whys

Myriad questions were asked after the accident. Why was an unlicensed driver at the wheel? Why was she driving so fast? Why did she try to pass two cars from the breakdown lane? What was going on inside that vehicle?

Investigator D’Angelo spent nearly two months completing the fatality report, which he said was about 2 inches thick and nearly 75 pages long. He never got answers to those questions.

“Any investigation that you devote so much time to that you cannot finish is very frustrating,” he said.

An autopsy confirmed that Hope Gagnon had not been drinking and had not been using drugs. Police learned that her license had been suspended for nearly six years for failure to pay traffic violation fines, but that didn’t begin to explain why she was driving 38 mph over the speed limit.

“These folks didn’t have a second chance,” D’Angelo said. “We’ll never know if this would have changed the way they looked at things, or changed how they drove.”

Some family members offered the notion that Gagnon’s 8-year-old son, Deion Stuart, might have been suffering from an asthma attack. Kristian Smith-Armstrong also had asthma, his grandparents said.

“We’ll never know why, but I live on the fact that there was a medical cause for them to be going that fast; I can’t conceive another reason,” Linda Armstrong said.

“It would be nice to think that there was a severe [asthma] attack, but, … ” Gibbons said.

“We’d just like to know why; there’s no why,” Storen finished the sentence.

Friends of Hope Gagnon said the group was headed to Fort Kent to visit a man Gagnon had met on the Internet. Those rumors were never confirmed, and no one in Fort Kent came forward.

Linda Armstrong said the nature of the trip has always puzzled her.

“Kelley was a very easygoing girl who just got talked into things. People tended to take advantage of her; she never questioned anything,” she said.

Because the rental car was in Kelley Armstrong’s name, her insurance carrier, State Farm, had to pay for the costs that came out of the accident, including the funerals, the Armstrongs said.

Several months after the accident, MacKenzy Saint Paulin, Danielle’s husband, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against State Farm and was paid a settlement.

The Armstrongs never initiated any legal action themselves. “What’s the point?” Linda Armstrong asked, adding that she and her husband never blamed Hope Gagnon.

“I really wasn’t angry. You’re more in shock than anything. Kelley was partially at fault for allowing someone to drive her [rental] car,” Linda Armstrong said.

Think twice

Most of the nearly 200 people who died on Maine roads in 2004 were in accidents involving excessive speed.

“With the cars that are being produced today, people have a false sense of security,” D’Angelo said. “You’re never going to stop people from speeding. What you hope to do is deter them, and we’re doing that by increased exposure.”

Bob and Linda Armstrong said that they’re glad people remember what happened to their daughter and grandson, and they hope it makes a difference.

“I’m sure it slowed people down for a while, but they forget about it. … You don’t ever think anything like that can happen to you,” Bob Armstrong said.

“God, think twice before putting the pedal down, because it does, it affects so many people. Look at how many people were affected by this just in our own family,” Linda Armstrong said.

Fines for speeding have increased, and some want to make the penalties even more severe. For now, D’Angelo and his colleagues can do only so much, but they will keep doing what they can.

“This accident did not slow people down, and that’s frustrating,” D’Angelo said, then paused to consider his next words.

“But it makes you more committed to enforcing speed and other traffic violations. People aren’t really going to change until something affects them,” he said.

“If I can slow someone down by writing them a speeding ticket, if that helps, I’m going to continue to do it – so I don’t have to make another death notification.”

Life goes on

Bob and Linda Armstrong are working hard to pick up the pieces of their lives. They have a son who is getting married this summer, and the couple said they hope that will be the start of a good streak.

“I don’t know if I could have handled either [Kelley or Kristian] living [without the other],” Linda Armstrong said. “I would have liked to have one of them alive, but … they were together.”

Talking about the accident and reliving memories of Kelley and Kristian is difficult for the Armstrongs, but it helps.

“One of the good things – if there was anything good – the week before that I had been driving Kelley to work and Kristian to day care while her car was being fixed. And there was a couple days when I figured, ‘I’m not going to take him to day care, I’m just going to keep him with me and we’re going to have a little fun,'” Bob Armstrong said, smiling at the memory.

“It’s been a tough year. I would not wish that on anyone,” Linda Armstrong said. “I never thought it would be, but I can say, it gets easier … life goes on.”

The firefighters in Etna have moved on as well, but they haven’t forgotten. About a month after the crash, a phone message was left at the Etna Fire Station. The voice on the tape belonged to Elliot Stuart, father to Hope Gagnon’s three children.

“Don’t let it haunt you,” Stuart said on the message, his voice filled with emotion. “You did all you could … from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry you had to be there.”

Chief Gibbons never erased the message. He said he’s not sure why.

Perhaps it’s the same reason he keeps a small piece of metal at the fire station that one of the firefighters brought back from the wreckage. Perhaps it’s why several members of the Etna Fire Department were planning to visit the accident site Monday night to pay their respects.

It’s hard for them to remember, but it’s even harder not to.

“You have to take strength from this, … and what I’ve taken is: No matter how bad it is, I know I can do it,” Gibbons said last week at the station. He paused and looked up at Assistant Chief Storen. “I may need help, but I know I can handle the call.”