ONLY ON WCCB: A Stanly County Couple Remembers Their 22-Month-Old Son Killed In A Tragic Accident
STANLY COUNTY, NC. — When you talk to Sydney Campbell and Spencer Cantie, you can hear the pain in their voices. The pain that can only come from every parent’s worst nightmare becoming a reality — having to bury their own child. In Spencer and Sydney’s case, their first and only child. SJ was killed in a tragic accident one week ago.
The 22-month-old was the life of the party with a huge heart.
“We want him to be remembered as the happy boy he was, that knew no stranger,” Sydney Campbell says.
The accident happened last Wednesday afternoon on Page Road in Mt. Pleasant. Sydney says she was getting ready for a doctor’s appointment and her friend came over to watch SJ for the day. She says when they went to the kitchen, they realized the screen door was slightly open, and SJ was gone. It turns out SJ had walked out and ended up behind a truck at the home next door. The highway patrol says a man doing work at the house put the truck in reverse as he left and realized he hit something. He thought he ran over a dog but quickly saw little SJ.
“I looked out the screen door, and I see him laying in the driveway, and the driver is freaking out, and I just run down there and ask him if he hit him, and I get to him, and he’s lifeless. He’s blue. I roll him over, and I just remember screaming, please don’t take my baby.”
The couple says the driver came to SJ’s funeral and visitation and feels horrible about what happened. He is not being charged, and investigators say it’s just a tragic accident.
“Honestly, it could happen to anybody. It could’ve been anybody, and he stopped and tried to help.”
The couple says what’s getting them through this is faith, family, love, and the community. The funeral home paid for SJ’s funeral, and a GoFundMe has raised more than $13,000 for the family.
“We have nothing but the biggest support system we thought we would never have, honestly. We thought it would just be family, and we never knew that it would go throughout the whole community,” says Spencer.
