A grieving mom has issued a warning to other parents after her two-year-old daughter tragically died because of a fan cord.
Journy Harr, 30, and her husband Randell, 37, tucked their children into bed in September 2020. But their lives crumbled down when they heard the screams of their oldest son.
Their dad quickly ran to the bedroom and immediately yelled out to call emergency services.
Journy rushed to the bedroom and found Lilly freed from the fan cord. Their son explained that the young girl had wrapped it around her neck while playing but she tripped and strangled herself.
“Our five-year-old son said she got the cord and made a wrapping motion around her neck, then took a step, fell and hung herself,” Journy said.
“He said that it happened, he called for help and daddy came. It was so fast – I can’t stress that enough.
“It had been bedtime, so the kids go to bed and you check in every 10 to 20 minutes to put them back in bed, turn off the light and then do the whole thing again.”
Journey from Missouri, US, continued: “Lilly’s brothers were sharing a room with her because we were painting their room. They were still very young themselves – my oldest was five years old at the time.
“My husband (Randell) had just gone and checked on them then we heard our oldest son yelling down the stairs.
“It was so fast, within 10 minutes. He had just been upstairs.
“I was thinking one of the kids was just doing something, then I heard him open the door and shout ‘oh my god, why, why?’ Then he was screaming to call 911.”
“I never saw it. By the time I raced upstairs he had already gotten her down but the fan was in her window,” Journy said.
“She wasn’t breathing at this point. She wasn’t responsive at all.
“Randell was working on her doing CPR and I was on the phone with 911, freaking out. They had to yell at me a couple of times because I wasn’t coherent.
“I just remember him working on her and yelling at her to breathe, saying ‘come back baby, come back’. He raced out to meet anybody that was coming so they could be working on her properly.
“The ambulance actually ended up getting lost because we live in the middle of nowhere.”
“I remember him running through the house holding her and she was just flopping,” Journy continued.
“I really thought she was going to make it because I knew how small of a window it had been. I’d watched Randell go up minutes before so I knew it couldn’t be long.
“I’d heard stories of people being oxygen-deprived for significantly longer than that and making it. I’m an optimist anyway and I was convinced she was going to make it.
“Finally, our neighbor ended up being the first responder and he thought she was going to make it too.
“He worked on her from the time he showed up until they were finally like ‘let’s just go to the hospital and do CPR at the back of the car.”
Journy then took her three other children to a friend before rushing to the hospital to be with her husband and their 2-year-old daughter.
But on her way there, she received a heartbreaking call from Randy.
“Randy called me when I was about halfway there and I could tell by his voice that something was different. He sounded calm.
“I asked him what was happening and he told me ‘she didn’t make it, baby’.
“This very strange peace came over me. I am a spiritual person and I call that divine intervention. It was night and the roads were windy and if I was freaking out while driving, it wouldn’t have been good. I was being protected there.
“I just remained very calm and very peaceful. I felt in my heart that it was going to be okay somehow.
“It didn’t hit until after I got to the hospital and I saw her. She was all wrapped up in the blanket and she had a tube in her mouth.”
“Randy was holding her and she was so cold. It was when I got her in my arms that it hit me because I was holding her and she wasn’t there,” she continued.
“They worked on her some more at the hospital for a while and they stopped and said there was nothing they could do.
“Randy said no and shoved through. He started working on her again and they helped for a little while longer, but she was gone, she wasn’t coming back.
“I kept telling myself when I was holding her that she was going to open her eyes and it’d be some sort of medical miracle.
“She was pronounced dead that night.”
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