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Nightmare prolonged for families
By Jeanne Starmack
CAMPBELL
Photo
Three were killed Saturday when a car traveling between 80 and 90 mph on Blossom Avenue crashed into a house, top, at 525 Cynthia Drive, where Blossom dead-ends.
Photo
Three were killed Saturday when a car traveling between 80 and 90 mph on Blossom Avenue crashed into a house, top, at 525 Cynthia Drive, where Blossom dead-ends. This is a picture of the car after the accident.
It’s every family’s nightmare — a loved one lost in an accident.
When Mahoning County Coroner Dr. David Kennedy refused to open his office after a car accident last weekend, that nightmare was compounded for three families, some of those family members say.
At 8:30 a.m. Monday, families of Elijah Paige, 20; Poetry Dotson, 21; and Ian Stores, 17; were able to go to Dr. Kennedy’s office to make sure it was indeed their children who’d been killed when a car traveling between 80 and 90 mph on Blossom Avenue crashed into a house at 525 Cynthia Drive, where Blossom dead-ends.
Police had notified the families after the 5 a.m. accident Saturday, telling them they’d made tentative identifications.
Paige’s family was notified around 8:30 a.m. that it was his car in the accident, and he was likely the driver. Notified around 11:30 a.m. was Stores’ uncle, Daryl Stores of 12th Street in Campbell, with whom Ian was staying. The last to be notified was Tamira Dotson, Poetry’s mother. Detective Sgt. John Rusnak said police had a hard time reaching her until around 2 p.m.
Police also went to St. Elizabeth Health Center to see a fourth person who survived. Malquan Patton, who lives with his mother on 13th Street in Campbell, remained in the hospital Monday in critical condition, police said.
Between the time they were notified and the time the coroner’s office opened for business Monday, they had no closure, said Cordie Paige, Elijah’s mother.
It was Elijah’s car that had crashed, but until they could make the identification at the coroner’s, Paige said, they wondered if he could still be alive.
“Maybe someone else was driving the car; maybe he’s sleeping at someone’s house,” said Elijah’s sister, Latisha Weaver, 24, at their home on Blackburn Street in Campbell Monday.
Cordie Paige agreed her son could have let someone drive. “He had a lot of friends, and he offered them rides. It was a little taxi service out here,” she said.
Paige said her sister, a doctor who lives in Tucson, Ariz., even called Dr. Kennedy to ask him to open the office. “He gave her every excuse about budget cuts,” said Paige.
Dr. Kennedy has said he will not send investigators to death scenes and that he is laying off an investigator Friday. He has said coroner’s investigations will begin the next business day, in this case, Monday.
“She said, ‘I’m talking to you on the phone, so you can take five minutes to go open the door,’” Paige continued. She said he told her he would not.
Tamira Dotson, whose daughter lived with her on Reed Avenue in Campbell, said Monday the wait caused her more pain and trauma.
“I have yet to see her,” said Dotson. She said she saw a picture at the coroner’s office. “Until this morning, I didn’t know if we could have an open casket,” she said.
She and Paige both had praise for Campbell police. The two said they believe police did the best they could without the coroner’s help.
Paige said Rusnak went “above and beyond duty.”
“He tried to get the coroner to come in, and he wouldn’t come in,” she said.
Rusnak said Monday he was “sick about Dr. Kennedy.”
“We had to make those families wait for two days,” he said.
Paige said she is a nurse and she works at a nursing home. “’[Because] of budget cuts, I’ll take a cut, but patient care isn’t going to stop on weekends,” she said. “How can you tell families, ‘Don’t die on weekends?’”
Paige remembered her son as “her baby,” who was always helping people. After obtaining his General Educational Development certificate, he planned to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh to study video-game design.
He and Dotson were close friends, and he also was close to Stores, having grown up with him.
Stores’ grandmother, Lillian Stores of Campbell, said Sunday that he was a good boy who attended Boardman High School and worked two part-time jobs.
Poetry, said her mother, loved to read and loved animals. She was also very close to her brother, Austin, 18, who lived with them.
“She was a very, very, sweet girl,” Dotson said. “She loved everyone. She never met a teacher, principal, or parents — she never met anyone who didn’t want to take her home.”
Dotson said her daughter worked at Youngstown State University in janitorial services.
Patton’s family could not be reached.
Rusnak said Monday police may never know why the car was going so fast. He said there is no evidence — pending a toxicology report — that alcohol was involved. He said police also have no evidence that another car was chasing Paige.
Funeral arrangements for Stores and Paige are pending. Dotson’s calling hours are from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Van Dyke-Swaney-Rettig Funeral Home, 60 W. Martin St., East Palestine. The funeral begins at 7 p.m. there.
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