1:17 pm: Autumn Lanea Stevens
Bowling Green, Kentucky: Seven-year-old Autumn Lanea Stevens was "so full of life," says her grandmother, Carolyn Chism, who helped raise the little girl with the dark hair and green eyes. "She was into cheerleading, and she made a good little cheerleader. She was just as pretty as she could be. She was going to be a knockout when she was grown," Chism says proudly. "She loved to camp. She loved to go swimming. She was in gymnastics. She was in Brownies. She even tried to play ball. Whatever her brother does she's got to do." Autumn was on her way to camp when she died in a rollover crash. She'd been sitting in the back seat of a Pontiac Grand Am alongside her 3-year-old sister, Imagen, and 6-year-old brother, Dakota, with their mother, Shannon Stevens, at the wheel. Stevens told police that 2 cars behind her were racing each other, and one zoomed past her then braked abruptly as the cars headed into a curve in the road. Trying to avoid a collision, Stevens ran off the road and hit a ditch. Autumn, who had unbuckled her safety belt during the drive, was ejected through the rear window when the Grand Am overturned. Dakota and Imagen were restrained and remained in the car. Both were uninjured. Their mother was cut and bruised.
Autumn was one of 4 people younger than 12 who died as passengers in motor vehicle crashes that day. She was among the 1,519 children who died in crashes during 2005. Autumn and her brother, whom she called "Bubby," were only 11 months apart in age and "very, very close, like twins," their grandmother says. "When she died he didn't want to talk about her for a long time. Imagen says her sister's up in heaven." A rising second grader at Lost River Elementary School, Autumn took it upon herself to collect money for Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. She wanted very much to help children with serious illnesses. "Every time she would get some money she would want to donate it," Chism says. "She was really, really thoughtful about that." Autumn's family donated her eyes to help two children see. "That's what she would have wanted because that's the kind of little girl that she was," her grandmother says.
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"It was really, really bad," says Chism, who rushed to the crash site after getting the call from her daughter. "My daughter was covered from head to toe in blood. Shannon heard [Autumn] breathing her last breath."