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Warren organization provides family with new start
Video
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
On a brand new wood floor, TraLynn Crowder, 12, carefully entered her new home on Palmyra Road Southwest to dozens of people, some wishing her “Merry Christmas” and “welcome home.”
Everyone wore shoe covers to avoid leaving behind dirt or water.
It was a joyous pre-Christmas welcome Thursday to a new home provided to her family by the Warren group Team Sanders Inc., which refurbished the home with donated labor and materials.
The Trumbull County Land Bank donated the home, which the Crowders will own for free. Team Sanders also runs an after-school program and sponsors community events.
Team Sanders called the event “Home for Christmas.”
Right behind TrayLynn was her grandmother, Peggy Crowder. It was an emotional moment for TrayLynn, who has experienced many of them over the past six months because of the murder of her mother, Jessica Crowder, on June 24 at their home on Hamilton Street Southwest.
TraLynn actually witnessed her mother, 36, being shot by Jessica’s boyfriend, Roleigh Culver, 27, of Howland. Culver then went to a house nearby and killed himself.
TraLynn can be heard on the 911 call telling a dispatcher, “He just shot her.” Her grandmother, Jessica’s mother, told TraLynn to call 911 as the tragedy unfolded.
Team Sanders, which carried out a similar project last year, didn’t want to see the Crowder family – TraLynn, Peggy and TraLynn’s two brothers – spend any more time in the rented house where the killing took place.
William Sanders of Team Sanders knew TraLynn because she attended a Team Sanders after-school program at the time of the murder.
“They called us, and we went over to console them, and we knew we had to get them out of that house,” Sanders said of the home on Hamilton.
Sanders said he couldn’t imagine trying to live in the home where your loved one was murdered.
Team Sanders went to work several months ago, putting roughly $10,000 into the home – putting in new flooring in the family room and elsewhere, replacing plumbing, painting, receiving donated furniture, and having two roll-off containers worth of items from the house that had to be removed and cleaned out. The city provided the containers for free.
“A lot of people came and donated their time,” Sanders said.
The living room even contained a decorated Christmas tree with presents underneath and a laundry basket full of cleaning and home supplies.
After seeing what people had done for them, Peggy said, “It’s just amazing. I’ve found Warren is a wonderful community, and I’ve been blessed by love and support.” She agreed with Sanders that living in the old house is difficult. “I think this will be a new beginning,” she said.