'She was yelling for me and I was yelling for her'
Spaulding County: Stacey Peavy could hear her daughter screaming "Mommy!" But when she ran into her daughter's pink bedroom, the outer walls were gone. So was 13-year-old Kylie.
Peavy found Kylie in the side yard, still lying on her mattress -- and, incredibly, alive. "She was yelling for me and I was yelling for her," Peavy said. "I had to step out of the house to find her."
The tornado that devastated several homes on Sidney Drive in Spalding County "just sucked [Kylie] out -- the whole end of the house came off," said her father, Spalding Sheriff's Sgt. Joe Peavy.
Stacey Peavy brought Kylie back into what was left of the one-story frame house and they huddled with Joe and Kylie's two teenage brothers in a bedroom closet until the tornado passed.
Kylie suffered a head bruise but no serious injury. "They took some X-rays; she's fine, but I think mentally it's going to bother her for a while," Stacey Peavy said.
As Joe Peavy surveyed the destruction, he said he felt very fortunate. "The house can be replaced. It can all be replaced. The kids can't."
Larry Hartstein, lhartstein@ajc.com
