Creek rescue felt 'like a lifetime'

With the waters of Rockfish Run tugging at his legs and a shirtless 9-year-old boy under one arm, Chuck Worden reached for the child’s mother as she dangled from the railing of a bridge Saturday.

He caught the woman by her hair.

But the strands slipped through and the flooding brown water stole Tina Marie Allen. In her arms was Lacy Elizabeth Taylor, 8.

The woman and the girl drowned in the flooding creek Saturday after they slipped while crossing the Kirby Avenue bridge at about 5:30 p.m. Police said the trio went around a barricade placed there after a vehicle became stuck earlier.

The group had been playing in puddles near the creek, but it was the attempt to cross the bridge that left relatives crying and questioning why the group was there in the first place.

“I want answers,” Lacy’s grandmother Tammy Guy said Monday. “I really need ‘em.”

Worden, a passer-by, couldn’t answer why they tried to cross.

But he tried to help.

The 44-year-old, who lives in North Garden near Charlottesville, said he was riding in the passenger seat of girlfriend Judy Gentry’s truck on East Main Street when he noticed Allen, her son Adrian, and their friend Lacy holding hands near the bridge.

By the time they turned around and drove back to the bridge, Allen was at the edge, holding a child’s hand in each of hers.

“We could tell the boy didn’t want to go,” Worden said.

Before Worden’s calls stopped them, the group was stuck clinging to a railing as water, five times its normal depth, coursed around them.

Worden slogged across 35 feet of watery roadway, about waist deep in points, to reach the boy.

At that time, Allen slipped, with Lacy in her arms.

“I reached over the post and all I got was [Allen’s] hair,” Worden said.

He held on.

“In hopes of … of, I don’t know,” he said.

The pair slipped away. Worden took off running along the bank, but could barely keep up.

At one point, he jumped in the water while holding a branch, he said.

Allen caught a vine once, so Worden grabbed a garden hose, thinking he could throw it out. But he could not dislodge it from a shed

“To me this whole thing is like a lifetime,” he said Monday. “But I know it was just minutes.”

On the bank, Adrian was praying, Gentry said.

“It was like a bad dream,” she said. “It was just a horrible, horrible incident. They just didn’t heed the warnings.”

After a few moments, the pair in the water separated, Gentry said.

Rescue crews arrived and found Allen’s body within an hour. They found Lacy at 7 a.m. Sunday. Autopsies were planned for both, said Waynesboro police Sgt. Kelly Walker.

A woman who lives within sight of Rockfish Run saw the rescue effort and told a story that matched Worden’s. The woman said the boy did not appear to want to cross the creek and that Worden put out a tremendous effort.

The neighbor said she’d never seen in a drowning in the creek in 69 years. Police could find no record of one either.

Worden was left cold and shaking, but amid the confusion, Adrian thanked him.

“All I could do was grab his face and kiss his forehead,” he said.

The moment overwhelmed Worden, who knew the pain of a drowning too well.

His 18-month-old daughter died in a pool in 1995, he said.

“That’s what drove me to do this. I didn’t want another family going through the pain,” he said. “If [Adrian] can smile today, my daughter’s smiling too.”

Worden and Gentry left quickly that evening because of the emotions, they said. Police spoke with them later.

On Monday, Worden and Gentry left a card for Adrian at the Waynesboro Police Department. He turns 10 on Friday.

Signs of tragedy

Back at the creek, friends and relatives of the victims gathered Monday afternoon to plant crosses and tie balloons.

Lacy’s older brother, Logan Taylor, 20, remembered her as strong-willed.

“I didn’t think she was dead,” he said of the night before her body was found. “I wish I could have another day with her.”

Her grandmother, Tammy Guy, said Lacy loved music, dance and guitar.

“And she liked the chicken wrap from McDonald’s,” she said.

The grandmother said the second-grader at Wenonah Elementary School was “8 going on 20,” comfortable hanging out with adults and sometimes bossy toward cousins.

“She was just an outgoing child,” she said. “I loved her very, very much.”

Lacy stayed with stepmother Penny Taylor because her mother Julie Guy, 34, was jailed in February on an assault charge, according to court records and friends. Acquaintances said the girl was energetic despite issues at home.

Julie Guy was released on bond Monday to be with family, and her mother said she’ll be allowed to remain free. She could not be reached Monday.

Allen had also been in trouble with the law, and most recently jailed in May 2009, court records show. And a week ago, a cat bite hospitalized her for about three days, her boyfriend Adrian Barber said Monday.

Otherwise, “it seems like things were getting back together for her,” he said.

Allen struggled to find a job because of her criminal record, Barber said. But she worked various summer jobs and sold items at the flea market off Broad Street.

Allen was well known in the neighborhood and often played with her son and other kids.

“Sometimes,” Barber said, “it hits pretty hard.”