A year after his death, Austen Russell is celebrated by his family — PHOTOS

After the doctors stopped trying to save him because there was no brain activity or heartbeat, after time alone with him to say how much they loved and cherished him, after gathering their four other children inside a neighbor’s house and telling them their brother’s appointed time had come and he was gone, after the police had asked their questions and the sun had set on the most dreadful day of their lives, Troy and Deedra Russell finally laid down in their bed.

They tried shutting their eyes and couldn’t, because in that instant of darkness came the most horrifying of images from hours earlier, of 9-year-old Austen lying in their driveway, one arm stretched forward, blood pouring from his mouth and ear, his breathing forced, his life slipping away in a most devastating and sorrowful manner, the truck that had run over him now stopped in the middle of the street.

“It was a bad movie in high definition constantly playing inside our heads, a close-up of your worst nightmare that wouldn’t go away, of watching your little boy die,” Troy said. “Losing your son and then closing your eyes to the most gruesome sight any parent could ever imagine. We couldn’t close our eyes.

“Jesus Christ said to pick up our cross and follow Him. This is my burden to live with. This is the trial I must endure. I think about it every day. Every single time I drive over even the smallest of bumps, it all comes rushing back.”

His voice cracks and tears begin to well in his eyes, because this is a crying day.

Troy Russell was driving the pickup that ran over and killed his son.

LOVE OF SPORT

Before we understand how and why such tragedy occurred in a small, quaint, gated neighborhood in Henderson nearly a year ago, it’s important to know the boy Austen Russell was and how the most profound and committed sense of faith has kept his family from cracking at its foundation in a most irreparable manner.

Troy’s parents attended Brigham Young, and it was when Austen turned 3 that father and son began watching basketball together, when Jimmer Fredette was making national headlines for the Cougars and a little boy in Henderson learned math by keeping track of the score and playing games in his head, which might explain why he later became a wizard during daily math bees at school.

He would dribble a ball down one hallway and shoot at the front door, dribble back and shoot at the carpet. BYU was the door; Utah was the carpet.

The carpet never won.

On his fourth birthday, he received a Little Tikes basket and spent the entire day shooting, not wanting to open other presents or partake in the celebration. When it came time for bed, and after giving him several warnings that he needed to stop, Deedra told Austen that if he shot once more, he would lose the basket.

He looked at her, then at his newly prized possession, paused and shot.

“He didn’t want to do anything else,” Deedra said. “He didn’t want to do chores. He didn’t want to do homework. The minute I turned my back, he was outside shooting. I would give him a punishment by gathering up all the basketballs and then 10 minutes later, he’d be out there shooting with ones he had stashed from me.

“He was determined, driven, focused from a very young age. He was a really sweet boy with a fun energy about him … I can’t believe we’re coming up to the year anniversary … It’s like the days drag on but the months fly by, you know? …”

Her words and thoughts are drifting now.

The tears are streaming down her face.

It’s a crying day.

Austen was 5 and couldn’t understand why the basketball league he played in didn’t keep score during games, why the guy in the striped shirt wearing a whistle never called traveling on the one kid running around the court with the ball, why nothing seemed like those BYU games he watched on television.

He was usually the smallest kid on a team and yet always the most skilled physically and advanced mentally. It was the same in football, where Austen played quarterback and by his first season in flag was already checking down to a third and fourth receiver. His room remains much as it was a year ago, with all his trophies on a dresser and his BYU posters on the walls and some of his No. 3 jerseys now framed, along with a Super Bowl ring from his tackle football championship.

“I miss him coming into my home,” said Laura Welch, a neighbor and close friend of the Russell family for more than 10 years. “Austen was one of the most beautiful children I ever laid my eyes on. Sometimes, he would just walk in our door and not say a thing, start shooting baskets, make his 100 and look at me and say, ‘I’m done.’ He didn’t say a lot but was full of love and life.

“Troy and Deedra are obviously incredibly strong people, but they would not have been able to get through this without their faith. It kept them going. It kept the family together.”

HIS APPOINTED TIME

The Lord will never allow a righteous person to die unless it’s their appointed time.

It is this prophecy that prevented the foundation from cracking, that has, in many ways, saved the Russell family this past year.

They are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it is through Mormon teachings that Troy and Deedra and their children — Collin (15), Kyler (13), Payton (6) and Maddie (3) — sought guidance and comfort and understanding about that Saturday afternoon last May.

“It’s unbelievably difficult,” said Troy, 42 and a chiropractor who worked with both the Las Vegas Wranglers and Gladiators from 2004-07. “It really hurts seeing Austen’s friends outside playing. That tears us up. But I know that he is fine and safe. That has helped us get through this.”

They are convinced events surrounding the accident suggest things played out in an inevitable manner.

That it was, merely, Austen’s appointed time.

They tell how in the week leading to Austen’s death, younger sister Payton, who had never done so before, wanted to sleep in her brother’s bed each night; that his third-grade teacher had moved up an assignment scheduled for the following week and had her students write a life poem, in which Austen two days before his death said the person he wanted to meet most was God and the place he wanted to see most was heaven.

That Deedra was able to step in and help Austen and a friend prepare and present a school fundraising project of making and selling popcorn once the friend’s mother became ill.

That was Friday afternoon, the day before their world collapsed.

The evening after her son’s death, Deedra tried keeping busy by doing laundry. She reached inside Austen’s church pants from the previous Sunday and removed a piece of paper. On it was the scripture, “For the Worth of Souls is Great in the Sight of God,” and a colorful drawing. Austen never saved any of his church papers. Ever.

It was days after the accident when Deedra caught herself collecting many of Austen’s belongings, and lost it. She was sobbing uncontrollably to the point Troy couldn’t console her, so a friend came over and laid with her for hours.

Troy later found himself looking into a bathroom mirror, telling God that the pain was too much, that he couldn’t comfort his wife, that if He could see fit to send Deedra a sign that things were OK, he would gladly accept all the pain for both of them.

One evening a short time later, their daughter Maddie climbed into their bed and the next morning told her parents she had seen someone, that it was Austen in a white dress above his parents bed, that he had motioned for her to remain silent so as not to wake them.

The sign.

As they tell it, Austen should have probably left them sooner, saved at 18 months by Troy when a toddler car pushed down a hill steered off course at full speed and his head and neck came within inches of striking a metal hitch attached to a boat; then there was the father-son camp a year before Austen’s death when he fell from a 9-foot jungle gym, hitting the pavement with his face and having his neck snap backward.

Deedra, who wasn’t with her son in either instance, is sure she knows why such close calls didn’t result in death.

“I think,” she said, “that I needed to be with him when it was his time.”

THE ACCIDENT

Sometimes, fate is just so incredibly heartless.

Why didn’t the damn ChapStick roll under the car?

It was Saturday, May 30 of last year, and Troy had taken Austen to register for a recreation basketball league that morning. On the way home, Austen asked if his father had any ChapStick. He didn’t.

Six hours later, the family had decided to clean out their garage and donate several items to the needy, meaning they would pack the bed of the pickup truck Troy had bought from his brother.

The truck was parked at the curb in front of the Russell home, but Troy thought it best to back into the driveway to shorten each trip from finding items and loading the bed.

When it was full and time to depart, Troy climbed into the driver’s seat. He had a taste for some gum, searched around and didn’t see any. So for the first time in six months, the first time it ever crossed his mind to do so since purchasing the truck, he lifted the middle console box. There was no gum.

But there was ChapStick.

Deedra was with Austen and Kyler, walking to and from the backyard to the garage with different items. Troy rolled down his window.

“Austen, do you still want some ChapStick?”

The boy paused, shrugged and started from the back of the garage toward the truck.

A world collapsing …

Troy: “I first thought about just throwing the ChapStick all the way into the garage and having him get it there. I was late, in a hurry, but like any parent wanted to make his child happy. I instead tossed it to him and he tried to one-hand it instead of catching with two hands, and it dropped. He catches that nine out of 10 times …

“So then I watched as the ChapStick rolled down the driveway and turned inward. It stopped right before going under. Had it gone under, I would have waited for him to get it and made sure he was clear. But he bent down, picked it up and stood up.

“So I turned, got ready to leave, put it in DRIVE and went forward.

“Then I felt the bump …”

Deedra: “I had never heard Troy scream my name like that … I turned around and saw Austen on the ground. I immediately grabbed my phone and called 911 and started CPR while holding him … He was breathing for like a minute before …”

Two houses away, a physician’s assistant and close friend named Steven Olenchak heard a knock at his door. It was a neighbor telling him something terrible had happened and to come quick.

Steven: “When I got there, my training sort of took over and yet the emotions are going crazy because these are people we all love, a child we all love. But right away, when I saw the amount of blood coming from his mouth and that Austen was in a state of shock and with his head injury, I knew it wasn’t going to turn out with a favorable ending. There was just too much blood for that little body.

“At that point, Deedra was talking with 911 and Troy wasn’t saying anything. I knew of their (LDS) faith and asked if they had any oils to give a blessing. Troy was able to find some and gave the blessing while we did chest compressions before the paramedics arrived. I told Troy, ‘You need to talk to Austen.’ So he did, telling him how much he loved him.”

Troy: “Initially, I thought something had fallen off the truck. It was a big bump … He must have dropped the ChapStick again … When I stopped and saw him, your first thought is if you’re worried someone has broken their neck, you don’t want to move them. If I could go back in time, I would have picked him up and held him. I believe as his spirit left his body, he was there with us, watching us, seeing it all happen. I believe he was fine, but just wish I had held him …”

Deedra: “The firemen and ambulance got there really fast and I was able to drive with Austen to St. Rose Hospital. It’s funny the things you remember, but I had completely lost it and was crying so hard. I remember the doctor walked up to me at the hospital after they had been working on Austen for a while and saying, ‘Can we stop now?’”

Troy: “The police arrived at our house and I had to stay and answer questions and I have always understood that part. They were wonderful with me. I was numb. At that moment, had they blamed me and arrested me, I wouldn’t have cared. I was in total shock. I couldn’t move. Moving actually hurt.”

Deedra: “One of the first things I said in our last moments together with Austen is that I would never have any anger or feeling of blame towards Troy. It was my idea to clean out the garage. It was my idea to fill the truck and donate stuff. I will never blame Troy because I know how deeply he loved Austen and what this has done to him.”

Troy: “I’m not sure it was as much guilt as incredible anger at myself. Why didn’t I throw the ChapStick into the garage? Why didn’t I make absolutely sure he was clear of the truck? Why did I open that middle console for the first time in six months? I continue to ask myself a million questions. But that’s where our faith comes in. I could second-guess myself every day the rest of my life, but I believe God has a plan and nothing could have prevented this.

“I said at his funeral that it felt like a house has fallen on our family and no matter how hard we push, we can’t get up. But little by little, the house moves and we see all the love and support and messages and cards and hugs and tears and visits and meals from others helping lift the house. All the support helped an impossible situation become bearable.”

HOLDING AUSTEN IN THEIR HEARTS

The picture collage hangs on a wall in the kitchen of the Russell home and in the middle is one of a smiling Austen wearing a green shirt. This is the hardest one for Deedra to look at, because it closely resembles her son the way he appeared on that Saturday last May.

So some days she looks and some days the family watches videos of Austen and some days they visit his gravesite and some days they don’t. It all depends on if they feel like crying.

It is said real friends are those who can be silent with us in a moment of despair and stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can face with us the reality of our powerlessness in such a heartbreaking time.

It was family and friends and an LDS ward that over the next few months stepped forward with every manner of help and prayer you could imagine.

It was BYU athletics, its football and basketball programs, players present and past, who sent care packages and videos and reached out even months following that fateful day.

“It was such a sad story and the Russells are a special family,” BYU basketball coach Dave Rose said. “Life can be cruel and in those times, we just hope that by reaching out in a small way, we can bring some sense of peace to people fighting through the toughest of things. I can’t imagine the level of pain they have felt, especially (Troy).”

On Friday, a day after he would have turned 10, an Austen Russell Life Celebration will be held at a nearby park, where two benches and a street sign are named for Austen and a giant orange basketball is dedicated in his honor. A community page on Facebook named, “In Loving Memory of Austen Russell,” includes pictures and videos and remembrances over the past year. Thousands have visited the page.

One of the biggest fears Troy and Deedra had shortly after Austen’s death was that, as time passed, so too would the memories of him fade, that they would gladly keep all the pain and grief and tears to have him clear in their minds, that they just didn’t want to ever stop talking about him.

Troy told a story at Austen’s funeral about his son’s first and only season of tackle football and how the offensive line had not yet learned how to block. During one early scrimmage, the opposing team had a bigger, faster, more athletic linebacker who constantly shot through the line and nailed Austen time after time after time.

Austen kept getting up, kept calling another play, kept going.

It was, in part, the message Troy delivered his wife and four children as they sat in a neighbor’s house on the evening of May 30, 2015.

“I told them this was a major blow, and we needed to decide how we would respond,” Troy said. “Are we going to fracture and break apart, or are we going to grow closer? Are we going to use this to bless people’s lives and help others or be bitter and angry and let it destroy us? Are we going to follow Austen’s example of getting up and fighting and not giving in?

“We know Austen is fine. We know we will see him again. But we just now barely put the marker on his grave. It was really tough. It’s one of those, ‘Do I want to cry today? Do I feel like watching the sad movie today or hold off until another?’ Nothing is going to bring him back …”

He reaches over and touches his wife’s hand.

She wipes away more tears.

It’s a crying day.

On Friday, nearly a year after they spent some time alone with him to say how much they loved and cherished him as a final goodbye, Troy and Deedra Russell will lie down in their bed after a celebration of their son’s life and close their eyes.

“Deedra and I have each only dreamed about him once since he died,” Troy said. “And they were both very sweet dreams of only wonderful memories with Austen.

“That’s what I see when I close my eyes now.”

Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Twitter: @edgraney