Floridian: A sorrow shared

Laurel's parents can't say they really understand how someone could forget a child in a hot car, but they know it happens. And they know how the aftermath feels.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published August 12, 2004

[Times photo: Ted McLaren]

Candace Johnson distributes fliers and purple ribbons in the Citrus County community of Hernando last week to raise awareness of the dangers of leaving children unattended in or around motor vehicles. Johnson’s 4-month-old daughter, Laurel Victoria Jurban, died last year after she was left in a car.


	[Family photo]
	Laurel Jurban, 4 months old, died after being left unattended in a hot car last year.

	Rebecca Jurban has talked to a psychologist and relies on friends to help her deal with having left her infant niece in her car. “It helps to talk about it,” she said. “It would be nice to have someone who understands.”

At a funeral last week for Mackenzee Hynes, a 31/2-month-old girl who died after she was left in a hot car, two of the mourners had never met the Hynes family but knew what they were going through.

They had been there themselves.

Mackenzee died on July 30 after her father, Edward Hynes, forgot to drop her off at day care before going to work in Inverness.

The tragedy was nearly identical to the death of 4-month-old Laurel Jurban a year ago Friday. Laurel's aunt, Rebecca Jurban, had forgotten to take the baby out of the car outside her home in Citronelle.

Rebecca Jurban came to the funeral hoping to give Edward Hynes "some hope to hang on to." Laurel's mother, Candace Johnson, came carrying a sympathy card, the same blue version that she received three of last year.

They came because they wanted to let Edward Hynes know he wasn't alone, that they, too, experienced a tragedy at which outsiders shake their heads in bewilderment or knee-jerk judgment. To many, such deaths seem so preventable, so inexcusable.

But they do happen.

* * *

Before Laurel's death, her large extended family was living under one roof: a double-wide mobile home in Citronelle owned by Rebecca's parents, Tom and Sabrina Jurban.

They left the home much of the year to their middle child, Rebecca, and their youngest son, Tom Jr., nicknamed T.J. He and his fiancee, Candace, had moved into the mobile home four years ago after the birth of their first child, Tommy.

Last Aug. 13, Rebecca gave Candace a ride to Central Florida Community College in Ocala, where Candace was scheduled for orientation that morning. Baby Laurel came along, strapped in a car seat in the back of Rebecca's 2000 Ford Focus.

Long drives, Rebecca says, were her time to think. A college student, Rebecca drove almost two hours a day from her home to City College in Gainesville.

She began dwelling on her grandfather, who died the month before. His funeral was the first she ever attended.

She began thinking about a boy she had broken up with that spring. He blamed her for his failing out of college.

She began thinking about a best friend who moved away. She began crying.

"Who next?" she says. "I was feeling like everybody was leaving me."

At the end of the trip, Rebecca parked under a shady cedar tree at home at 9 a.m, forgetting her passenger in the back seat. Laurel wasn't discovered missing until noon.

* * *

After Laurel's death, the state Department of Children and Families told T.J. and Candace that their son, Tommy, couldn't live with Rebecca during its investigation. The agency barred visits, too.

So the couple and Tommy moved into Candace's brother's rental home while the investigation dragged on.

T.J.'s parents boxed up Laurel's belongings.

"They could not come home to be here with us," says T.J.'s mother, Sabrina Jurban. "To hold her favorite things: her teddy bear, her blanket. Finally they gave up."

Tired of sharing a pullout couch, the couple had moved into an apartment.

T.J. told Tommy that "Baby Laurel" was in the sky with angels. The boy has proposed getting a ladder to bring her down.

"They said it best in The Lord of the Rings," T.J. says, "when the king said a father should never have to bury his child."

The year since her death has been like having cancer, the couple says.

"You don't ever get over it," says Candace, who is 24. "You learn to live with it. It doesn't get better. ... It doesn't get nicer. It doesn't get easier."

They say they have forgiven Rebecca. But that doesn't change what they feel.

"I can't honestly say that I understand it," says T.J., who is 23, "because I've never forgotten my son in a car."

"We know it was an accident," Candace says. "We know there's some trigger that erased that part from her brain to remember the baby was in the car. I still don't understand."

After Laurel's death, Candace jumped back into classes at Central Florida Community College in Ocala. Rebecca took a semester off from her classes at City College. In May, however, she graduated with an associate degree in allied health. She now attends Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, where she lives.

She wants to work in medicine but says she now feels cursed around children and that any wound she cares for will become infected.

The DCF investigation, she says, did not help her heal herself or her relationship with her brother and Candace.

"It made things difficult," says Rebecca, who is 25. "It drove a wedge in us because we couldn't get through it together."

Even though the case was closed and she was not prosecuted, Rebecca says she felt like a criminal. She withdrew, too scared "somebody would know who she was from the papers," her mother says.

The media had waited outside for two days looking to interview someone who people knew only as the "aunt," the "babysitter."

Rebecca was afraid someone would call her a baby killer. She took Lexapro and Xanax to kill the anxiety.

Her parents did what they could. Tom Jurban Sr. traded his daughter's Ford Focus for a four-door sedan. Other reminders, such as how the interior of a car feels on a hot day, can't be erased.

She still puts the blame squarely on her shoulders and carries it everywhere.

"I still do," she says. "I'm still trying to rationalize it. But you can't."

She will not let an infant or toddler ride with her alone.

She doubts she can ever have children.

"Do you think I'd be a good mother?" Rebecca has asked a friend. "Who would want kids with me? ... I don't know how someone could want kids with me."

* * *

When Rebecca and Candace heard about the death of Mackenzee Hynes, they each felt they had to do something.

Rebecca sent sympathetic messages through a victims' advocate to Mackenzee's father. She e-mailed a car seat maker, asking why there aren't car seats with some kind of alarm system.

Candace began passing out purple ribbons. They came from 4 R Kids Sake, a nonprofit group that has designated August as "Purple Ribbon Month" to raise awareness of the dangers of leaving children unattended in or around motor vehicles.

She also wrapped a purple bow around the palm tree in her yard and the antenna on her car. She gave away so many bows that she bought more ribbon.

One day last week, Candace and her mother, Debbie Johnson, visited nearby stores, asking if they could post fliers and ribbons.

They stopped at Baby Bargains, a new and used kids clothing and furniture store, where Candace's mother had bought Laurel's cradle.

They stopped at Ace Hardware, where an older couple in the checkout line asked for a ribbon, though they didn't have young children.

They stopped at the Chicken King restaurant, where they approached a woman in charge who had a black apron around her waist.

"We're wondering if you'd be able to put this up in your window," Candace said, "and remind people not to leave their children in cars?"

"Sure," the woman said, before pinning the flier to a bulletin board. "You're quite welcome, because we heard about it last week, and I don't understand how anyone can leave their baby in the car."

"Well, it happened to me last year, and it happened to Mackenzee," Candace said, without hesitation. "So it can happen to anyone."

The woman requested a fistful of ribbons.

Candace says she doesn't know what she will do Friday, when she is faced with the first anniversary of Laurel's death.

But Rebecca, who still sleeps with one of Laurel's outfits nearby, has a plan. She will visit Laurel's grave and gaze at the headstone, which has a picture of the infant, smiling, playing with her feet. She will remember the child she had seen born and remember that she had cradled her to sleep in a blue recliner the night before she died. She will bring a porcelain angel with her, to lay at the site.

"When I get there," Rebecca says, "I just want to stay there. It's hard for me to leave her, because I don't want to leave her again."

-- Justin George can be reached at 352 860-7309 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 11, 2004, 12:51:07]

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