Dawn and Ray Simmons, of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, would normally be preparing for a big family Christmas right about now. But instead, Dawn is lying in an ICU bed and Ray is preparing to bury their three youngest children.
Lindy, 20, Christopher, 17, and Kamryn, 15, were all killed on Friday, December 17, when a pickup truck reportedly driving the wrong way down Interstate 49 collided with their car. As a result, their young lives were cut tragically short, and their deaths have sent their close-knit community into mourning.
At the time of the crash, the family was heading home after a trip to Monroe.
They had traveled there earlier that evening for one of Christopher's basketball games, and had even brought along his 16-year-old girlfriend, Marissa, to help cheer him on. But at some point during the two-hour trek home, a pair of headlights appeared out of nowhere, and before Dawn could swerve to avoid it, a pickup truck hit her SUV head-on.
According to authorities, the pickup was driven by 54-year-old John Lundy, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Twenty-year-old Lindy had also died by the time first responders arrived, but the other four passengers â Dawn, Kamryn, Christopher, and Marissa, were alive.
Paramedics rushed the four injured people to a nearby hospital.
There, they were met by trauma surgeons, who did everything they could to save them. Sadly, though, Kamryn and Christopher did not survive their injuries, and died a short time later.
According to a GoFundMe page set up for the family, Dawn remains in critical condition in the ICU, where she is still unaware that her three "babies" â the youngest of nine children â have all died.
As for Marissa, the 16-year-old reportedly has a broken hand and a broken femur, and remains in the hospital as she recuperates from surgery. That said, sources say the teen remains "completely devastated" by the accident.
The entire St. Landry Parish community remains devastated, too.
As news of the accident continues to spread, Dawn's older daughter, Katie (Simmons) DeRouen, has been updating friends, neighbors, and even concerned strangers on her Facebook page. And with each and every post she shares, her family's pain can be felt deeply.
In some, she lays her grief bare for all to see.
"My babies. Oh, my babies," DeRouen wrote in a post from December 18. "I am broken. I will forever be broken. There was so much life left to live. My babies."
In others, she speaks directly to her siblings, and celebrates the amazing people they were.
"You were my twin," she wrote to her youngest sister, Kamryn. "Everyone always told me how you and I were identical, not realizing that we were also basically the same person … I couldnât wait to show you the path to have the same career as me. It would have been perfect for you."
To Christopher, whom she called her "innocent, sweet baby brother," she remembered him as the kid who could do no wrong.
"You were Momâs angel child," DeRouen wrote. "The golden child. The perfect one. The only one that I knew wasnât going to add a gray hair to her head. Your life being stripped away at such a young age when you had SO much ahead of you is what breaks my heart most."
And to Lindy, her "baby sister" who was already blossoming into a talented photographer, DeRouen said it was still so "surreal" to see her name written in an obituary.
"You were the best aunt to my big kids and the most amazing nanny to Bregman," she wrote. "It will be so weird to not have anyone to capture my babies. To not pop up randomly to visit with mom. To not be able to nag you about not living to your fullest potential. I knew what you were capable of and I wanted to see that through."
At the same time, DeRouen has found it difficult not to unleash her anger.
She has openly accused Lundy of driving drunk when he crashed his pickup into her mother's car, though authorities have not yet determined whether or not that's true.
"If you choose to drink and drive, you are the scum of the earth. The most selfish being to ever exist," she wrote just one day after her siblings were killed. "To the person who decided to drive drunk in the wrong direction on a highway and killed my babies, I donât know who you are, but I am glad you are dead. You deserve to rot in hell. You ruined our lives."
Trooper Thomas Gossen, the public information officer for Louisiana State Troop I, told Today Parents that a toxicology report is pending.
âHe might have just been lost and confused,â said Gossen, adding that "it hasnât been determined that he was impaired."
For now, the Simmons family is doing their best to come together â for each other, and for their dad, who is beyond heartbroken.
Shea Simmons, an older brother of the three victims, told WSDU that the entire tragedy is "something I wouldnât wish upon my worst enemy."
But in a separate interview with KTVE channel 10, he said that he and his other siblings are just doing what they can to put one foot in front of the other.
"Weâre all brand new to this and just trying our best to figure out the best way to go about it,â he told the outlet.
If anything, he hopes his family's heartbreak will remind others that âlife is preciousâ and not to take things â or people â for granted, because "We really never know when it's our time."
