TOO YOUNG TO DIE
'She was just a little kid on the bus going to school'
Ottawa Sun
Britney part in bold
DUNROBIN -- Sandrine Craig was two steps away from life.
The 12-year-old had given up waiting for her school bus in the cold wind of Tuesday morning. She was two steps away from the door when her yellow Laidlaw bus appeared, 15 minutes late, in the distance on the long curves of Barlow Cr.
"I was going to give her a ride," said Bob Dolan, who lives next door to Sandrine.
Dolan and his wife, Heather, had babysat Sandrine over the weekend while her mother, Diane Craig, was in Toronto on business.
"She smiled and laughed and ran back to the road and got on her bus," Dolan said. "Five minutes later she was in a coma."
Sandrine never regained consciousness after a late-model white pick-up truck smashed into her bus and sent it rolling violently into a field at Thomas A. Dolan Pkwy. and Fifth Line Rd. The truck's driver, Walter Kavanagh, 70, was pronounced dead at the scene.
All 12 students on the bus were taken to CHEO. The last two, Kate Milliken, 12, and Mickey Reardon, 14, were released yesterday.
A heavy wave of grief rolled over the green hills of Dunrobin
yesterday when Sandrine died of her injuries in hospital.
"She was just a little girl on the bus going to school," said Sandrine's stepmother, Judith McIntosh.
"Nobody expected she wouldn't come home at the end of the day. Our hearts are just totally broken. This is just so tough, I can't explain how very tough this is in words," she said, overcome with emotion on the steps of Sandrine's Barlow Cres. home. "Sandrine was like sunshine. She was tall and slim and beautiful," she said, breaking down in sobs.
Sandrine's step-brother, 18-year-old Alex McIntosh, leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. His eyes welled with tears listening to his mother speak of the blonde-haired ball of energy he'd taught to shoot hoops.
"She was my princess. She was my best friend. And now she's gone. She's gone," he said.
He said his little sister was looking forward to accompanying him to an upcoming Britney Spears concert.
"We had the tickets and she was so excited. She was a 12-year-old-girl. She loved the Backstreet Boys. She loved Britney Spears. She was just so innocent," McIntosh said.
The family had camped out in the intensive care unit, praying for their girl to wake up.
"It's just so hard watching all those other kids going home from the hospital, and you're happy for them, but it just breaks your heart that our Sandrine is not coming home," Judith McIntosh said.
Bob and Heather Dolan described Sandrine as "a loved member of our family."
"We had so much fun on the weekend," Heather Dolan said, adding that Sandrine had attended church with them on Sunday. "She was always helping out. She was in a hurry to grow up and she was looking forward to starting her job as a babysitter."
The Dolans said Sandrine loved swimming in the river behind her house. "She was Dunrobin's little mermaid," Bob Dolan said.
On the bus, the little mermaid and her friend, Joanna Reardon, were reading their futures with a toy that told fortunes.
"That's when we felt a big jerk and we started to roll," said 12-year-old Joanna, who is nursing a broken arm. "She was such a good friend. We'd always go swimming in the river together. We'd paddle on the surfboard."
Sandrine's schoolmates burst out the doors of Huntley Centennial Public School when they were informed of their friend's death shortly after 2 p.m. yesterday.
Students ran and wandered through the schoolyard, clutching each other for comfort. Wailing sobs and shrill screams of "Why!" and "No!" pierced the quiet community of Carp.
Police say the crash is under investigation.