Ryan Nickerson has been racking his brain, trying to make sense of the crash that killed 10-year-old honor student Kennade Patterson last week.
“I’m trying to cope and I’m trying to forgive myself,” he wrote in an emotional Facebook post Monday. “I understand it’s not my fault, but there is guilt no matter what.”
Nickerson, 32, was traveling on Maxham Road near Old Alabama Road in Douglas County when his pickup truck struck and killed Patterson as she crossed the street, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
Patterson, a rising fifth-grader at Annette Winn Elementary in Lithia Springs, had sneaked to the BP convenience store with her two siblings to buy potato chips. She was not in the crosswalk when she was hit.
“You can’t fathom the feeling of knowing someone died and you’re a part of that,” Nickerson wrote.
The Villa Rica father of two detailed the moments leading up to the deadly crash from the time he began his usual morning routine to his coping moments.
“I got dressed, made my lunch and my coffee and proceeded out the door to what I thought was going to be a normal work day,” he wrote.
About 5 a.m., Nickerson was atop the hill where Alabama and Maxham roads intersect when he saw something darting in his direction.
“It was small and I could not tell what it was,” he said. “I thought it was a baby deer trying to get what I believed were deer in the center lane.”
Nickerson said he didn’t have enough time to press the brakes as what he thought was a deer was already in front of him. He pulled over, called his wife and boss to alert them of the crash and then called police.
Just as the investigation began, cops told Nickerson he’d hit a person.
“Instantly, I felt a pain and nausea unlike anything I’ve ever felt,” he wrote. “I asked immediately if they were OK and they could not tell me anything.”
Nickerson said investigators began taking photos of his car, asking him where he was going, what he was doing —everything he saw and did.
“I told them everything I could, trying to digest that I had just done something no one ever dreams will happen to them,” he wrote.
After he was questioned, the Georgia State Patrol told him that the person had died.
He didn’t find out it was a 10-year-old girl until he was watching the news later while feeding his 1-month-old daughter.
“My heart broke into a million pieces,” he wrote, “and I know that while my heart will heal, there will be pieces that never are put back together.”
Nickerson returned to work Monday, but said nothing since that day will ever be the same.
“I had to go back (to work),” he told The AJC on Tuesday. “I don’t want to be back. But for me I understand life continues and I need to keep busy so that I don’t drown in this completely.”
Nickerson said he has kept Patterson’s family in his prayers.
“I cannot imagine the pain the other family affected by this is going through,” he wrote. “I can only hope that they will recover and they will be OK.”
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