[19 / 2 / 18]
archive ph/rkJgm
A few miles up the Blue Ridge, they found Ty at the scenic overlook, listening to music in the locked car, the engine idling. Chandra hopped out of the SUV and pulled on the sedan’s driver’s side door.
“Ty, it’s me, it’s Mom,” she yelled. “Let me in. Let me in.”
John, 54, pounded his fists against the vehicle’s back windows, trying to break the glass. Ty looked at them blankly. He twisted the key in the ignition, not understanding that the car was already on. Then, he floored the sedan into reverse, nearly running over his dad. He swerved around a bend in the road. At mile marker 37, he veered across the opposite lane and slammed into a low brick wall. The air bags poofed.
Chandra and John followed in the SUV, only 30 seconds behind him. They quickly came upon the crash. The front bumper of the Elantra was twisted and mangled. The horn blared incessantly. Ty sprang from the car and sprinted into the forest. He was swallowed by darkness.
“If you ever feel as if life’s currently too difficult or even too much, getting outdoors and going for a walk on the trail or a hike through the woods can get your mind back on track,” he wrote in a school essay.
He was reclined against a fallen tree in his boxer briefs, his arms plunged through the legs of the Nike shorts he’d been wearing beneath his pajama bottoms and tried to use as a makeshift shirt for warmth. The right side of his head rested against the tree, the hospital booties covering his socks.
Chandra knows how much her son’s heart weighed: 290 grams. His brain: 1,540 grams. She knows that his right lung was heavier than the left, and that when he was found, he had larvae in his left eye. She knows he died of hypothermia, with blunt-force injuries. At first, the coroner hadn’t been able to tell her when it happened. Only later did she confide to Chandra that he’d probably died that first night he had gone missing.
A few miles up the Blue Ridge, they found Ty at the scenic overlook, listening to music in the locked car, the engine idling. Chandra hopped out of the SUV and pulled on the sedan’s driver’s side door.
“Ty, it’s me, it’s Mom,” she yelled. “Let me in. Let me in.”
John, 54, pounded his fists against the vehicle’s back windows, trying to break the glass. Ty looked at them blankly. He twisted the key in the ignition, not understanding that the car was already on. Then, he floored the sedan into reverse, nearly running over his dad. He swerved around a bend in the road. At mile marker 37, he veered across the opposite lane and slammed into a low brick wall. The air bags poofed.
Chandra and John followed in the SUV, only 30 seconds behind him. They quickly came upon the crash. The front bumper of the Elantra was twisted and mangled. The horn blared incessantly. Ty sprang from the car and sprinted into the forest. He was swallowed by darkness.
“If you ever feel as if life’s currently too difficult or even too much, getting outdoors and going for a walk on the trail or a hike through the woods can get your mind back on track,” he wrote in a school essay.
He was reclined against a fallen tree in his boxer briefs, his arms plunged through the legs of the Nike shorts he’d been wearing beneath his pajama bottoms and tried to use as a makeshift shirt for warmth. The right side of his head rested against the tree, the hospital booties covering his socks.
Chandra knows how much her son’s heart weighed: 290 grams. His brain: 1,540 grams. She knows that his right lung was heavier than the left, and that when he was found, he had larvae in his left eye. She knows he died of hypothermia, with blunt-force injuries. At first, the coroner hadn’t been able to tell her when it happened. Only later did she confide to Chandra that he’d probably died that first night he had gone missing.
