Chapter
25

The year before the accident, I had negotiated a change in my compensation at the hospital in Breaux Bridge. I wanted more time with my family, so I was approved four weeks of time off with pay. At that time, this was forty-eight hours per week. I had already used two weeks of my time off. I would use the other two weeks right after the accident. At the time two weeks at home seemed an appropriate amount of time to get my mind away from work and focus on the changes of my life. We bonded intimately as a family during those two weeks. Elna, Alex, and I stuck closer to each other than ever before or since. There was an old Disney movie that Alex suddenly got addicted to. It was called Three Amigos. It was an old low-tech cartoon, but we watched it over and over and over again. Sometimes, things are so obvious that you can miss the point, and this might have been one of those occasions for me. It was not until years later when I was telling someone how Alex became addicted to that movie, that I realized the name. It was us. We were becoming the three amigos. I actually had to fight that. Alex deserved to have a dad, and she needed a dad. God did not pick me to be Alex’s friend. I was gifted with the responsibility of being Alex’s dad. That’s what I was called to be and that’s what Alex needed. I also didn’t need to lean on my three-year-old daughter to be my friend. She was my daughter. She wasn’t my friend.

 

I needed to make fatherly decisions for Alex. I remember early on, Elna and I had a panic assessment of how in the world could we even let Alex out of the house again. We thought we had done all we could to protect our kids and keep them safe from harm. We thought that having private childcare would keep our kids safer from any harm or germs. We thought they’d get more close attention than they would in day care. On the day of the accident, we had our kids travel in the backseat of a Chevy Suburban properly strapped into car seats traveling home from a summer camp in suburban St. Tammany Parish. St Tammany Parish, by the way, was the most affluent area in Louisiana with the lowest crime rate. We analyzed and reanalyzed the situation repeatedly. How could we ever let Alex out of the house again? Then we were reminded by our pastor that before Alex was our kid, she was His. We had an important role here as a steward of Alex, but she wasn’t truly ours. She was His. We needed to do our best to care for Alex, but we had to let her live her life. If we didn’t let her live her life, then we would have had two kids that would have lost their lives that day. Alex must be allowed to live because God ordained it. God chose it. God wanted it.

 

Now Alex would probably tell you that her parents were too overly protective, but we tried our best. It was hard bringing her back to Cedarwood school and leaving her there for preschool. It was hard seeing her get her driver’s license and drive away in a car. It was hard seeing her go off to college at the age of 17 on the other side of the country at Pepperdine. It was hard seeing her travel both with us or without us on trips to Guatemala, Grenada, India, and across Europe. However, God has never and will never leave her side. That’s the promise of Joshua 1:9.

 

Speaking of Joshua 1:9, while I was home for those two weeks after the accident, Elna and I were paid a visit by the funeral home about the tombstone. It had never entered my mind that at 33 years of age that it would be important for me to buy family grave plots nor a family headstone, but here I was looking through a catalog of assorted styles and types of stone. A baseball bat to the face and chest would have been easier to withstand. Again, God never left our side. We ended up getting four burial plots with a Dease Family headstone behind all four. Below the Dease name on the big stone we had engraved, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9”

 

A couple of days after the accident, a cold reality set in. The world wanted someone punished for the death of Jackson. On the night of the accident, Niki had been taken to jail from the ER and was charged with negligent homicide. A few months before, there was a case where a British nanny in Boston was accused of killing the child she was caring for. The case made international news.

 

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 “In 1997, Louise Woodward, a 19-year-old British au pair (born 1978), was convicted of the involuntary manslaughter of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen while caring for him in his home in Newton, Massachusetts, US.”

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The similarities of the case were very strange. The dad of the child was an anesthesiologist. One of the parents was of Indian heritage, and one was white. The deceased child was obviously mixed race. Several people started to discuss the odd similarities. I remember being upstairs in our master bathroom. Someone had called our house about the charges against Niki and how she would, of course, need an attorney. All of this was hitting Elna and I at the same time. At this point we couldn’t get away from the heartache of grief, but this seemed like complete BS to have to deal with. Just at that point, I remember noticing a car out by the gate to our house. It was just stopped at the gate which was closed. It didn’t ring to come in. It just sat there. At the time, we had a security camera connected to that gate to be able to buzz in people that rang to come in. There in the bathroom, I turned the TV to the channel with the security camera on the gate. The picture filled up the screen with the logo written on the side of the driver’s door. It said, “NBC News”

 

This was too much. This didn’t have to be happening. Niki made a mistake. She made a huge, horrible mistake, but it was an accident. If she was going to have to go through a legal defense, then we were going to have to pay for it. We would have to sit through depositions. We would have to go through a trial. This would be incredibly hard on our family. Jackson loved and adored Niki. He would not have been happy with her going through a defense for his death. Therefore, we called for help.

 

We approached the District Attorney’s office and asked them to drop the charges against Niki. They said that they had to proceed. We asked for a meeting to discuss the details of this particular case. We called for help from several leaders in the community to help arrange a meeting, and the DA’s office obliged. They would meet with us within a week.

 

I had a friend at church who was a news anchor for Fox 8 News in New Orleans. His name was George Ryan, and he was a fellow member of First Baptist. I called up George, and I said that I needed his help. I didn’t want what had happened to my family to somehow be sensationalized and to become something that it was not. I couldn’t speak to the DA directly, but I wanted to get our story to him through George.

 

The next morning, George arrived at our house with a film crew. Elna, Niki, Alex, and I sat with George. I told George that our main goal in the interview was that we wanted to represent God well. We wanted to display love and forgiveness that can only come through God. We would not find any peace nor any recovery from our grief in the prosecution of Niki Simpson. Prosecuting Niki would only bring more pain, heartache, and division. I understood that the DA’s office wanted to help us but going forward with Niki’s prosecution would not help us. It would hurt us.

 

The interview aired that night. It was also picked up by a new cable news service called Fox News. A friend of my dad in Kansas City was the first to call and say that he saw it there. It made a big impact and showed more than a few people a side of Forgiveness that only comes through the work of the Holy Spirit. We struggled and still struggle with forgiveness. However, with God’s power we can forgive.

 

The DA’s office agreed to meet with us. The conference room at the DA’s office was full. I remember there being a large boardroom type table with people that we had brought at every chair including Waylon and several dignitaries from the community. The DA did not show up. However, an assistant DA came in and spoke. He had the paper file of the case in his hands and laid it on the table to open it up. He said that the facts of the case speak for themselves. He said the pictures of the deceased body were graphic and horrible. He said this while looking down at the pictures that he was speaking about.

 

He then paused for a moment while looking through the file. He then said, “However, I understand that the family does not want to pursue any further action in this case, so the charges will be fully dropped.”

 

There was an audible exhale from Elna and I which was followed by everyone but Waylon Bailey moving out of their chairs to stand up and leave.

 

Waylon then said, “Wait one minute before we leave.”

 

I thought, “What is wrong with him? We got the answer we wanted. Let’s just get out of here and on to the next phase of this grief!”

 

But this wasn’t over for Waylon. Waylon was the pastor of a large congregation. In a previous year, there was another member of the church that had been involved with an accident where a motorcyclist had run directly into an oncoming car. The woman driving the car who was a member of the church had done nothing wrong. However, the man on the motorcycle had died. The woman was charged with vehicular homicide.

 

Waylon said, “Why was Niki charged with this crime in the first place?” Niki hadn’t been on drugs or drank alcohol. She wasn’t drag racing or even speeding. She simply made a mistake of which the family forgave her. “Why did it take a meeting like this to have these charges dropped?”

 

The Assistant DA said, “Do you realize that you people aren’t normal? People don’t come in here after an accident where their family member has died and ask us to drop the charges? They especially don’t do it where the deceased is a four-year-old child. Actually, they do the exact opposite. We are usually bombarded by family that storm our office and complain that the responsible party shouldn’t be walking around on bail! They usually want stiffer charges. Never have I seen anyone come and ask for the charges to be dropped. You people are different. You aren’t normal.”

 

John 13 New International Version

 

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”