The parents of a 5-year-old girl are warning others after she was killed by a snowboarder while on the slopes. 5-year-old Elise should be turning 21-years-old this year. Sadly, she died on Christmas Eve in 2010 after the family took a trip to a mountain in Casper, Wyoming.
Chauncy and Kelli Johnson will never forget their daughter. Speaking with People, they reflected on that fateful day. Chauncy was with 3-year-old Camilla on the bunny slope. Meanwhile, 5-year-old Elise was with her mother on a short blue run. The two stopped so Kelli could fix her daughter's ski. That's when a snowboarder going faster than 50 mph crashed into them.
The resulting impact broke Elise's neck. The snowboarder, Craig Shirley, also died from the crash. Meanwhile, Kelli suffered a traumatic brain injury and barely survived.
"She still doesn't remember the moment of impact, which is actually a blessing," Chauncy told the outlet. "I also feel fortunate not to have witnessed it, because the aftermath was so traumatic."
Those first few weeks were life-changing and difficult.
Safety on the Slopes
"She had amnesia and couldn't remember Ellie was dead," he said. "I started drinking. I didn't know how to process all of this. I basically became a functional alcoholic for about a couple of years."
He adds, "I was ready to give up on a belief in God. There were moments where all I could do was breathe." Eventually, he stopped drinking, and leaned into his faith again. "I realized with some good friends, Kelli, and some great support, that that wasn't gonna be a productive way to move my way through this."
Chauncy says, "Even in the beginning, I'd think about how I could make the mountain safer, even just for me to feel good about going back to skiing again. I started to really gain perspective, just hiking around the canyons and things like that, and just being in nature." During each PSA, they share the story of their daughter keeping her memory alive.
He explained, "But we're really the first people that have lost a family member on the slopes, come back in and said, 'We need to be more open about our conversations about safety on the mountain, and we need to provide people with better tools to understand how to mitigate risk better. We also want people to know we don't harbor ill will toward the snowboarder. Our accident was unprecedented in that there were three victims in a collision, and two had catastrophic injuries."
