Falling tree kills six-year-old girl in Morrow County

By Randa Wagner –

A freak acci­dent in S. Bloom­field Twp. claimed the life of a six-year-old girl Thurs­day afternoon.

Accord­ing to a press release from the Mor­row County Sheriff’s office, Mor­row County 911 received a fran­tic call about 4 p.m. August 30 from a woman on TR 198 south­east of Sparta, say­ing a tree fell in her yard and she could not find her granddaughter.

The grand­mother said the girl, Jala John­son, had gone out­side to share suck­ers with her brother, who went to the neighbor’s prop­erty to feed dogs and was not in the yard when the tree fell. The tree had a trunk five feet in diam­e­ter and was rot­ted at the base. The grand­mother heard the crash, went out­side and, when she could not find Jala, called 911.

Res­cue work­ers from the Cen­tral Ohio Joint Fire Dis­trict in Cen­ter­burg, the Big Wal­nut Fire Depart­ment, Mor­row County EMS and the Mor­row County Sheriff’s office responded to the scene. Emer­gency work­ers found the child, deceased, under the branches of the tree.

Jala’s par­ents, Eric and Lilly John­son, were in south­ern Ohio at the time of the acci­dent. Fam­ily mem­bers made con­tact with them by phone. The Ohio State Patrol located them in the Cir­cleville area and trans­ported them to the Mor­row County Hospital.

Funeral ser­vices will be con­ducted at 10:30 a.m. Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 7, 2012 at New­comer Funeral Home and Cre­ma­tory, SW Chapel, 3393 Broad­way, Grove City, OH. Bur­ial will fol­low in Green Lawn Ceme­tery, Columbus.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.