TYRONE -- From the very moment a school bus driver found a seven-year-old boy horribly and fatally injured at a bus stop along a lonely stretch of rural road in Huntingdon County, Pa., the story would keep changing.
It’s now more than a month since the Nov. 1 tragedy, and the story may be changing still.
The investigation by state police at Huntingdon remains open and active.
Trooper Joseph Dunsmore said police are awaiting the results of a battery of forensic tests that could help them reconstruct precisely how second-grader Nicholas Woomer was run over and crushed by a delivery truck as it backed up in the boy’s grandparents’ driveway.
“That is still a current investigation,” Dunsmore said. “Forensics and other avenues being looked at.”
Until then, questions in the tight-knit community surrounding Tyrone will linger.
But the first reaction on that fateful and fatal morning was shock, even panic.
Soon after the school bus driver on his morning pick-up rounds along Huntingdon Furnace Road made the gruesome discovery, state police initially reported the 7 a.m. incident as a fatal hit-and-run.
The implications in a small town where virtually everyone knows one another were profoundly unsettling: Some cold-hearted driver in this warm-hearted community had fled the scene after running down a second-grader as he waited for the bus in the driveway of his maternal grandparents’ house, where he lived.
But who would leave a seven-year-old for dead in the morning dark?
The news -- and the rumors – soon swept Tyrone that Thursday, Nov. 1, according to borough manager Ardean Latchford.
Social media lit up with debate over hurried drivers flouting the flashing lights of school buses – this time to deadly effect.
Some wondered why the young boy’s parents or grandparents would let him go to the bus stop all alone. But the stop was the driveway entrance at the home where he lived. Nicholas could be seen at all times from the windows of his grandparents’ house, just a few dozen feet away.
“It was getting to the point where, honestly, people were going a little crazy over it, I thought,” Latchford said.
Then, the story changed.
WATCH: The scene where Nicholas Woomer was hit and killed.
Later the same day, state police announced Woomer had been struck by a slow-moving vehicle. The theory of a hit-and-run driver was off the table.
The sudden change in the investigation was driven by the gruesome scene that state police and first-responders from the Warriors Mark Franklin Volunteer Fire Department encountered at that driveway bus stop.
According to Warriors Mark Franklin Assistant Fire Chief Jim McConnell, the left side of the boy’s body had been badly crushed, but his head and face were all but untouched by injury.
This, along with other evidence at the scene (and also what wasn’t there such as any evidence of an impact) indicated Woomer had been run over by a slow-moving, likely heavy vehicle -- not struck at speed, Trooper Dunsmore confirmed.
By the end of the day, the final piece to the horrible puzzle was falling into place – or so it seemed.
State police announced they were interviewing a delivery truck driver who had made a stop at the residence where Woomer had been killed that morning.
The box truck driver had delivered electrical equipment to the boy’s grandfather, Ross Lauder, who ran his electrician’s business from the home.
The driver, who has not been publicly identified nor charged with any crime, reportedly called police on his own accord after hearing of the incident and realizing he’d been there with his truck around the same time. State police would not confirm this detail, citing the ongoing investigation.
But police did announce what the truck driver told them: Namely, that the driver must have accidentally run over the boy while backing up to deliver the electrical parts at the Lauder residence.
The driver told police he never saw the child, who likely would have been standing in the driveway near the road in the dark of a November morning.
In announcing this development in the case the next morning, Trooper David McGarvey told the media at the time, “That’s what we believe.”
But believing and proving are two different things.
A couple days later, the Huntingdon County coroner pronounced Woomer’s cause of death as massive blunt-force trauma and declared the manner of death accidental.
The case appeared to be all but over.
Now it was time for the tight-knit community of Tyrone, population 5,000 or so, to turn to the solemn business of mourning a fine family’s enormous loss as they prepared to bury a child.
Nicholas Woomer, 7, enjoyed riding his bicycle, playing with his Legos and taking care of animals – especially Dixie, his dog.
The small town’s support system displayed its full strength and big heart.
“It really touched everybody,” said Rose Black, director of the Tyrone Area Chamber of Commerce and a member of the school board.
“Everybody just came together,” she said. “Even people who didn’t know the family reached out.”
Prepared food poured in to family members and relatives. A GoFundMe account for Nicholas’ funeral blew past its $25,000 goal within a day or two. And the line to visit the boy’s closed, child-sized casket and console the family snaked out the door of the Church of the Good Shepherd for six solid hours.
Nicholas was eulogized as a popular and friendly student in Mrs. Sharbaugh’s second-grade class at Tyrone Area Elementary and a talented outfielder with Warriors Mark Youth Little League. Above all, Nicholas was simply a handsome, loveable son, grandson and friend who enjoyed riding his bicycle, playing with his Legos and taking care of animals – especially Dixie, his dog.
A month later, and the loss still lingers.
“This being a small town, it hits home. It becomes a bit more personal. You think about it,” said shop owner and school board member Brian Bressler. “It hit me hard. He was one of ours.”
Mostly, the grieving has gone on behind closed doors.
The family has asked for privacy, and everyone from the school district superintendent to the town barber turned down a reporter’s requests for interviews on how the tragedy has affected the community.
But beyond the hurt and sorrow, questions still linger about the actual details of what occurred that fatal, fateful morning.
State police and other first responders spent much of the day at the scene, painstakingly documenting the aftermath, meticulously collecting evidence and trying to reconstruct the second-by-second details of what transpired. Yet, state police have not issued a final report, and the investigation remains open.
The forensics tests still pending likely include evidence collected from the truck, the boy’s body and the scene. However, Dunsmore would not elaborate on any of this.
Dunsmore indicated the forensic results could inform the final reconstruction of the accident. The report will attempt to show where the boy was standing and what part of the truck struck him first, then rolled over him to fatal effect.
Perhaps it will answer other questions, such as:
- Why didn’t the boy move out of the way if the truck was as “slow-moving” as state police have said?
- Was the truck equipped with a back-up beeper that could have alerted the child and was it in operation that morning?
- And how could the truck driver not have known he’d hit something?
Assistant fire chief McConnell is among those still pondering these and other details.
“Something don’t sound right,” said McConnell, who wasn’t at the scene that morning but has fully debriefed the volunteers who were. “I’ve been on enough of calls, and it’s like something is missing,” he added.
“Most of your trucks that deliver have a beeper on them,” McConnell said. “A seven-year-old boy, I can’t understand how he would stand on the side of the road and a truck would back up over him. I can’t understand a seven-year-old not getting out of the way. I don’t know.”
Of course, any answers, should they come, likely will be little comfort to the family.
A PennLive reporter knocked on the Lauder’s door, but the woman who answered -- Nicholas’ grandmother Debra Lauder -- said “I’m not talking to you guys,” then gently closed the door.
Most in the community continue to give the family plenty of space, jealously guarding their privacy.
Indeed, some seem content to leave well enough alone.
“Families spend a lot of time searching for answers when these things happen,” said former Tyrone mayor William Fink. “But there are no answers. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible accident. All you can provide is comfort. The family has to work through these tough times. Everyone should leave them to work through it.”
And Fink said the small town he knows will see to it.
“It is a community that protects its own,” he said. “And that’s what it’s going to do. It’s a slow-paced, laid-back way of life. But we take care of our own.”
But Tyrone borough manager Latchford insisted the human need to get to the truth is a powerful force, driving nearly every decision he makes in government.
“Right now, there’s a lack of information,” he said of the Woomer case.