For those who celebrate it, Halloween is supposed to be a fun night filled with spooky costume-goers and candy overload. But for four Newborn, Georgia, siblings, it was an evening marked by tragedy that would change their lives forever.
On Halloween night of 2015, State Trooper Nathan Bradley had only been on duty for a year and a half when he got the call that every cop dreads.
After receiving the report that a fatal accident had killed husband and wife Donald and Crystal Howard, he learned that it was his responsibility to break the soul-crushing news to their children.
Their parents had left for a quick trip to get more face paint…but sadly, they never returned.
“I immediately fell ill,” said Bradley of the surreal experience.
And the heavy blow hit even harder when he knocked on the Howards’ door to be greeted by four excited children dressed in Halloween costumes, eager for the night’s festivities that lay ahead.
As he came face-to-face with a sharply dressed Freddy Krueger, Dracula’s daughter, wizard and firefighter, Bradley’s game plan to announce their parents’ death quickly shifted on the spot.
“My goal was to preserve their Halloween. That’s the only thing I wanted to do,” said the big-hearted State Trooper, adding that his “secondary goal was to find the perfect way of telling them.”
