TEXT A A deputy sheriff’s dash
mounted camera captures his tornado chase. Racing just minutes behind the
monster storm he looks for damage and victims. Dep. Robert
Jolley, "It was big and ugly." He is stopped, briefly, by a
fallen power line. Dep. Robert Jolley, "We had to keep stopping,
moving debris, out of the roadway, things like that." At about
this time, he sees the tornado begin tearing through the rural community of
Bridge Creek. Beneath the storm, Robert Williams and his family
climb into a closet and brace themselves for the very worst minutes of their
lives. Robert Williams tells his family’s story, "We set down
and grabbed the door, and shut it, and held on to it as tight as I could. It
snatched the roof off, and pulled the mattress up, and pulled all the kids up. I
saw them go up; at the same time the walls fell; my wife was holding on to me,
fell over and sliding with the house, The trailer I guess blew up on this thing,
and slid over the top of us, and then it pushed us over that there, somewheres.
It killed my wife and had me trapped on the back of the house."
Williams’ wife died in his arms. Robert Williams, "She
couldn’t say nothing. I just held her head in my hands, cause that’s all I could
get up, and tears roiled down her face, and she died, and that was it. Tough,
tough, tough. Tough time for everybody." His daughter, Amy
Crago, her husband, Ben Molton, and their ten month old baby girl, Aleah,
vanished. Amy Crago says, "We was all together, and we all
rolled a little bit together, and then we just all went different directions. I
don’t know what happened to my baby during it all, but I didn’t pass out through
the whole thing, I remember it very well, and I was in the air, and all the
debris was hitting me and you can’t imagine how bad that hurt."
The tornado tossed Amy Crago and her baby hundreds of feet in different
directions. She says, "I went to 6ne house and I reached in one window and got a
shirt and put it on my head, cause it was bleeding, and I finally found a lady
and she took me down to where the police were and the police, I was just trying
to get my baby, I thought my whole family was dead." "I just
knew everybody was dead and I was all alone. I was so happy when they found her.
It’s just a miracle. There’s surely nothing else you can say about
it..." Amy Crago— Eventually Amy got a ride to a
hospital. That’s about the time deputy Robert Jolley arrived and saw Amy%
father. He says, "I saw one man walking in the road way say he lost his daughter
and granddaughter, so this is where I immediately started looking."
At the scene of the tornado he describes what happened when he went
looking for the baby, "We got down here to where all this debris is up against
the trees, Something caught the corner of my eye. I looked and I couldn’t see
anything. And when I looked again, I could see there was a baby, curled around
the base of the tree, down there, had her little face in the mud."
Deputy Jolley’s dash mounted camera captures the rest. "She actually
looked like a rag doll. She was dirty. Her ears were packed with mud, her eyes
were packed with mud. When the baby started crying, I felt great, felt
wonderful. I kept the baby with me for about 45 minutes, before I could find
EMS, and I turned her over to them." Baby Aleah was reunited
with her mother in a hospital. Now they are staying in a motel with her dad. She
says, "I just knew everybody was dead and I was all alone. I was so happy when
they found her. It’s just a miracle. There% surely nothing else you can say
about it." Amy lost her mother; her husband is in critical
condition, but alive. And except for a few bruises baby Aleah is doing just
fine. After the storm, Amy ______.
A.went searching and found her baby near the house B.was happy because her mother was safe and sound C.found her baby when she was in a hospital D.went to find her father and met Deputy Jolley