No parent should ever experience what it's like to lose a child. That pain is all too real.
Kevin Morgan’s parents Jen and Chris — along with his stepmother, Tanya Bennett — spent Thursday morning making funeral arrangements for their son, who was struck and killed by a freight train last weekend north of Barrie.
Kevin, a Grade 8 student at Portage View Elementary School in Barrie, was out walking the family dog, Eva, shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 21 along the Canadian Pacific Railway, near Highway 90 and Baldwick Lane in Springwater Township.
Jen told BarrieToday the family is devastated by Kevin’s death. She described her son as quiet and introverted, but with a big heart.
“Kevin was an avid animal lover and was close to his siblings. He was a good student with many friends we never really knew he had," added his father, Chris. "He was always willing to help and had an enormous heart that included his cousins, with whom he was quite close."
Chris said his son dreamt of travelling to England and Hawaii one day.
Kevin had been known to take in injured animals and try to nurse them back to health.
“I have a picture of him saving a turtle (and) there were always frogs coming in and out of the house... he loved frogs. Kermit was his favourite,” said Jen. “We were on our way home one day and there was a Canada goose that had been struck. It was in the middle of the lane on Highway 90 and he made them stop so he could help. He grabbed a sweater out of the back, wrapped it up and took it home to try to nurse it back to health.”
It was that natural instinct to protect animals, she said, that ultimately led to his death. There was a lot of speculation surrounding what happened in the minutes before Kevin’s death, and she said she wanted to let people know the truth — he was trying to save his dog’s life.
“The dog was trained to walk off leash, but there were only a couple of people that could walk her off leash and that was pretty much Kevin and myself," Jen said. "He was walking on the tracks with the dog and he saw and heard the train coming. He tried to chase the dog off the tracks after she crossed over to the other side. He chased the dog off the track and he didn’t make it. He was trying to save the dog.”
One of five children, Jen says all of her children were very close and would take care of one another, but she says his younger sister, Olivia, was especially attached to Kevin.
Huronia West OPP Const. Liz Newton said she did not have any updates Thursday, but the investigation is ongoing.
Rob Prouty, who is the principal at Portage View Public School on Letitia Street where Kevin and his two younger siblings attend school, said the school community is trying to find ways to come to terms with the loss of one of its own.
“Kevin has being doing learn at home since COVID hit, but despite the fact that he’s not been here almost a year, he continued his friendships,” Prouty said, adding a trauma team has been onsite this week to talk to staff and students about the loss.
“Normally, I might have the whole staff together, but because of COVID, I couldn’t do that. It’s not my style to do things through Zoom. For me, I want us to be together and be able to hug and hold. I want to see their faces, same with kids, behind masks to be able to see how they’re hurting,” he said. “They need to be hugged and held, and they can’t do those things right now.”
Some students opted to go home to grieve. For some of them, if they needed to be with their family or go home and hug their dog, they did that, while for others, being at school around friends and teachers was what they needed to begin to come to terms with the loss, Prouty said.
“The fact the trauma team was here was great, but it’s just different, and we don’t know what (their grief) is going to look like, so we could see more fallout as the week goes on,” he said, adding it’s still unknown if there will be a virtual service for Kevin the school community can participate in.
“They just want to be there and say goodbye," the principal added. "We are all in help and support mode, but we can’t go there and be there for them how we would want to be. It's all just really hard. Some staff would know the family because we have these kids for 10 years, (but) we follow their lead and whatever we can do to help and support we will.”
Kevin would have graduated from Grade 8 in June, said Prouty, but he's promised to find a way to honour the boy.
"It’s really early, but we will talk about some way to keep his memory alive," he said.
A GoFundMe campaign has been launched by a family member to help cover funeral costs.
Prouty confirmed the school is collecting gift cards to help the family longer term.
“Lots of people are dropping off food, but the fridge is only so big. Down the road, when not everyone is rushing to drop food by, they’ll have these gift cards to make use of when they need it," he said.
That outpouring of sympathy and generosity from friends and complete strangers has been overwhelming, said Kevin's mom, but she’s not surprised her son touched so many people while he was alive.
“I am speechless at the amount of people who’ve reached out," Jen said.
“We’ve been here at my mom’s house and off since 1989 and many have known him since he was a baby. He was just so caring," she added. "He put everybody before himself. If someone was upset, he would do little things to make you laugh. I have suffered from depression and anxiety pretty much my entire life and he would just do these silly things out of the blue to make me laugh.
"He was my protector.”
