DLNews Staff:
They snuggled up to each other, fell asleep contentedly - and never woke up again.
Jacksonville (USA) - In an unbelievable accident, parents Sadie Myers and Don Starr from Jacksonville, Florida, lost their twins, Aurora and Kellan (4) choked in a toy box! The mother of four shared her tragic story on Facebook.
Happy Mom: Sadie Myers also shared this photo with her twins with her followers.
On September 1st, Sadie was at work, her husband Don putting to bed twins Aurora and Kellan and their two older brothers. "When I got home from work a few hours later, I checked on the kids as usual to ensure they slept. Then I had dinner and went to sleep," Myers wrote in her post.
"They didn't even know it was happening."
The two children woke up while the family was sleeping and wanted to play in their nursery. According to the mother, they often did. But this time, everything was different: the children decided to lie down and cuddle in the cedar wood toy box, so they took out their toys.
"At some point during their sleep, one of them must have moved or kicked in a dream, causing the lid of the old wooden cedar chest to close," the distraught mother continues. And warns all parents: "Something I didn't know - and I'm sure a lot of other people don't know - is that most wooden toy chests, once closed, are AIRTIGHT and soundproof."
The mother shared pictures of her beloved twins from happy days in her post.
While the twins slept, they ran out of oxygen within a few hours. They died. Myers: "They didn't even know it was happening. There was no sudden gasp; it was a prolonged transition from sleep to death.”
Brother discovered his dead siblings.
It wasn't until the following day when the parents couldn't find Aurora and Kellan in their cribs, that panic broke out. The whole family searched everywhere for the four-year-old. One of her older brothers finally spotted her: "Axton yelled, 'Mom, I found her! They're so stupid they sleep in the toy box,'" Myers recalled. The boy thought his siblings were sleeping...
In a box like this, the two children (4) from Jacksonville suffocated.
But the relief didn't last long when the parents ran upstairs to see. Sadie Myers: "In a matter of seconds, I knew something was wrong. But I also quickly realized that it was already too late... It doesn't make any sense to me and never will... I hope (...) if you have such a toy box, you destroy it immediately! "
After the tragedy, Myers' sister, Deanna, set up a GoFundMe account. As of Wednesday morning, dozens of compassionate people have donated more than $22,000 to the Florida family.
The twins' aunt said Sadie and Don Myers worked hard to give them a fulfilling life. "They both had full-time jobs, one in the morning and one in the evening, so they never had to leave the children alone with a babysitter," she writes on the donation platform.
Every second with these twins was filled with laughter, silliness, dancing, silly questions, funny faces, games and jokes, happiness and LOVE," the mother describes life with her children.
Now, the Myers must say goodbye to Kellan and Aurora forever.
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