Friday, January 27, 2006
LAKE BUTLER, Fla. (AP) -- Barbara and Terry Mann were supposed to complete their adoption of a 20-month-old boy on Thursday. Instead, they were planning funerals for him and their other four children -- all killed in a fiery car wreck.
The accident Wednesday, which also killed two young relatives, cast a pall over this small town. After hearing of the accident, Barbara Mann's grief-stricken father suffered a heart attack and died. Friends and family came together to mourn the deaths of the seven children as investigators tried to piece together how the three-vehicle accident happened on a clear day on a road free of obstructions.
A tractor-trailer rear-ended the children's car and crushed it against a school bus that had stopped to drop off students, authorities said. The car burst into flames, and everyone inside was killed, including 15-year-old Nicky Mann, who was driving illegally with just a learner's permit and was apparently taking her adopted siblings home from school. Three children on the bus were seriously injured.
Along with Nicky, who was the Manns' biological child, and soon-to-be-adopted Anthony Lamb, the other victims were identified by authorities and friends as the Manns' three adopted children -- Elizabeth, 15; Johnny, 13; and Heaven, 3 -- and the couple's nieces, Ashley Keen, 13, and Miranda Finn, 8. Authorities had originally identified the victims as seven adopted brothers and sisters.
Members of the community described the Manns as a couple who lovingly and constantly opened their home to foster children.
Tammy Griffins, the church's student ministry director, said: "If foster care called them, it didn't matter what time of night it was when they got called, they were always willing to take them."
"They wanted 10 children," said Wanda Lewis, director of children at Fellowship Baptist Church in Raiford. "They just had a heart for the love of children that no one else wanted, the ones that no one else would have taken."
Lewis said Nicky was "just a fun, loving, caring girl" who doted on her adopted siblings. "She did everything for them, changed their diapers. She was the mother hen," Lewis said.
The children's relatives declined to talk with The Associated Press.