Mom has questions after crash kills son, Independence, Missouri
Greyson White and his cousin, Jade Harms, died together inside a car in a neighborhood Cleghorn has lived for 24 years.
Every day, Cleghorn visits the tree that killed 22-year-old Greyson and 21-year-old Jade.
When she goes to the grocery store, she passes the site. When she goes to work, she drives by it. “It takes me a couple of minutes to walk there,” she said.
Cleghorn maintains decorations on the tree, memories of the cousins who were “good friends,” Cleghorn said.
At 2:55 a.m., Oct. 23, Greyson was driving south on Cogan Drive at a “high rate of speed,” according to Independence police. He lost control of the vehicle and smashed into a tree.
Cleghorn said police told her the car was going 40 or 50 mph. The 1995 Ford Escort station wagon slid sideways about 200 feet before slamming into the tree, according to what police told Cleghorn.
The car hit the tree on the driver’s side. Greyson died immediately. Jade later died at an area hospital.
Cleghorn cannot understand why her son, who did not obtain a driver license until he was 19, was speeding.
“I think he was afraid to drive in a lot of ways,” Cleghorn said. “He would always make excuses before he turned 19 about why he didn’t want to drive. The day he got his license, he said ‘Mom, the chances of me getting into a car wreck in my lifetime is 100 percent.’ He said he looked it up. He was always a slow driver. People trusted him when he was driving.”
Mom and son’s last meal together was at a Subway. Mom asked what he was doing on that Friday night in late October. Nothing, Greyson said. He didn’t have any money.
That changed when Jade called his cousin around 12:30 a.m. The two went to Doc Hollidays on U.S. 40. They arrived at the bar and grill about 1:30 a.m. What happened from leaving the bar to the crash is speculation right now. Cleghorn said Greyson was going home.
One shred of good that came from the tragedy was that Jade’s organs were donated. Greyson’s eyes also were donated. One eye went to one woman and another to a second woman. Jade’s heart is now beating in a 50-year-old man.
Greyson will be remembered as a “good kid and son” who was on the right path to have a productive life, Cleghorn said.
“He was a smart kid,” she said. “He knew about any subject. Politics. Religion. He kept up with current events. When you told him something, the kid memorized it. It just makes me mad because I know there’s a lot of kids that drink and drive and do bad stuff. He didn’t do any of that stuff.”
Greyson worked at Copy-Rite Printing in Independence. He also created websites for people.
Greyson, who was shy and self-conscious, had suffered from a heart condition, the mother said. He was born with a condition called pectus excavatum that caused his chest cavity to cave in. “As a baby, it was a little dent,” the mother added. “Then it kept getting bigger.”
Cleghorn’s father, 80-year-old Lou Harms, lost two grandkids that day.
Lou Harms’s wife, Cleghorn’s mother, died last year from cancer.
“I think it’s harder on him,” she said.
0 COMMENTS:
Post a Comment