When Brenda woke up on August 23, 2007, she says she knew she had a busy day ahead of her. Summer vacation was coming to a close, and it was the first day back for teachers at her school. That morning, the rush to get out the door was more frantic than usual, she says.
Brenda and her husband, Gary, got their two young daughters, Allison and Cecilia, dressed and ready to go. Then, in a departure from their regular routine, Brenda loaded 2-year-old Cecilia into her car to take her to the babysitter's house.
"I had a dentist appointment, and I asked Brenda to take Cecilia," Gary says. "I normally took both Cecilia and Allison, dropped Cecilia off at the sitter and Allison off at preschool."
With Cecilia sleeping in the backseat, Brenda pulled out of the driveway at about 6 a.m. When she realized it was too early to drop her youngest child off, she decided to run a quick errand. Brenda stopped at the store to buy doughnuts, a treat for the returning teachers.
After loading her car with snacks, she got on the road that led to her school and drove straight there. With her mind racing through all the things she needed to accomplish before teachers arrived, Brenda got right to work. "I had lots of things to set up," she says. "I was nervous and frantic that morning because it was such an important day to get the school year [off] to a great start."
The day began with a staff meeting, followed by lunch. While chatting with new teachers between meetings, Brenda says she talked about her daughters. "My feeling was it was a great first start," she says. "It was going to be a great school year, and it was a great start to the day."
At about 4 p.m., Brenda was in her office, getting ready to head home when all hell broke loose. "A good teacher friend of mine—sometimes I think it was a blessing it was her—was on her way home, and she walked by my car," Brenda says. "She ran into my office and she said, 'Brenda, your baby's in the car.'"
Brenda immediately grabbed her keys and raced to the parking lot. "I knew what I was going to find," she says. "I opened my car door, and I remember hearing the voices around me. Teachers who were close to me [were] screaming."
When she got to her car she found Cecilia in the backseat, still strapped into her car seat. Brenda says she grabbed her daughter out of the car as fast as she could, but she knew it was too late.
"I knew she was gone as soon as I picked her up, I knew," she says. "I remember I took her, and I ran through the parking lot with her, screaming her name. Then, what brought me kind of to consciousness, I guess, was somebody from the cafeteria yelled for me to bring her here."
Brenda says she handed her lifeless daughter to someone who tried to revive her. Then, she retreated to another part of the cafeteria and began to pray. "I heard people yelling for ice, and I sat in a ball and I prayed," she says. "I prayed harder than I've ever prayed in my life. ... But I knew she was gone."
Cecilia died of a heatstroke after being left in the car for nearly eight hours. Outside, temperatures had reached 100 degrees.
Gary was working when he received a frantic call from Brenda's principal. "He said, 'Get over to the school right now,'" Gary says. "And I said, 'What's up?' [He said,] 'It's an emergency.'"
In the car on the way to his wife's school, Gary says he never considered that his child's life might be in danger. "The whole time I'm thinking, 'What disgruntled employee did something crazy?'" he says. "I said, 'Well, maybe something happened to Brenda.'"
When Gary pulled into the school parking lot, he says he saw a lot of commotion. Brenda's principal pulled him off to the side to tell him what happened. "He looked at me and he says, 'Cecilia's dead,'" Gary says. "I didn't even think to ask him, 'How? Why?' I just got up and sort of walked off to be by myself. I was just in shock. I didn't know what to do."
Despite his grief, Gary says he has never blamed his wife for Cecilia's death. "I could have done the same thing very easily," he says. On nights when his wife had to work late, Gary says she'd ask him to pick up the girls from the babysitter's house, a break from their normal routine. A few times, he says he forgot.
Sources from The Oprah Winfrey Show
