Breaking news in my backyard.

Our evening meal of "Bang Bang Shrimp" and a veggie side consisting of summer squash, tomatoes, corn, onion and garlic had been prepped...all was ready for me to watch the final hour of The Masters when I grabbed my iPad to look at work email.

John Buckner on the assignment desk had just forwarded a tweet from the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department about a plane crash and the location was two miles south of where we live.

I yelled at John to join me and he became my driver.

Would that Periscope was already developed for Android! I have an iPad with it loaded but it was on the charger. My phone was too but it had 40% so I grabbed it and left the ability to live stream behind.

We got to the corner just east of the crash and police directed us away. The WSVN live truck arrived a minute behind me and we both wended our way through the Calvary Chapel parking lot in an effort to get a closer view.

John is a good navigator in this circumstance although I don't see a "Nightcrawler" existence in our future.

Liane Morejon, the Local 10 reporter arrived moments later and took over.

John and I went home and I made dinner.

Four people died in the crash and at the end of the day, that's what I'm thinking about tonight.

When the news hits too close to home

Wednesday morning was one just like most others.  Wake up, turn on the morning news, make coffee, read the newspaper.  Our morning team was dealing with breaking news that day.  A wrong-way crash hurt three people.  I-435 had been closed for hours and was still closed at 6am.  Bummer for commuters.

That afternoon, I was on a conference call and idly clicked on to my Facebook page.  A message?  How fun!  I clicked it.

"The girls in the wrong way crash are Ken and Diane's daughters," my cousin messaged.  "They are headed to KC right now."

Ken (Kendall) Wiechmann is my cousin.  Our grandfathers were brothers so we aren't first cousins. Second?  Third?  Whatever.  We went to school together, starting in the one-room school house through 12th Grade.  We had the same last name so we walked one after the other at graduation in May, 1975.  I went off to college and he started his own career.  We hadn't seen each other in years.

When we were children, Kendall was always just a little bigger and a little stronger than I was.  We had a typical "cousins" relationship.  Our farms were a mile apart.  He had a sister who was Pam's age and a brother who was Paula's age.  We played together.  We swam in the creek together.  We poured water down gopher holes together.

"You're ugly," I would say to him.

"You're dumb," he would counter.

And we would throw dirt clods at each other.  (A common childhood  activity in South Dakota.  Dirt clods look like rocks but aren't as dense and turn into dust upon contact.)

Back to Wednesday afternoon.  I was frozen.  I raced to the assignment desk where Killer pulled the accident report. KrissaMarie (age 22) and Kayla Wiechmann (age 26), both of Nashville (formerly of South Dakota), were driving home to see their family.

Rory Liberty, a guy with a relatively clean record, apparently driving under the influence, crashed into their car.

I didn't know these girls but my heart ached for their worried parents.  Thursday I waited for the driver to be charged so I could tell their parents.  I looked at the girls' pictures on Facebook and wondered at their lives.

Another cousin told me about the driver who was right behind them when they collided with Rory Liberty's car.  He put out the fire that started and stayed with them until the ambulances came.

That truck mechanic saved them from further injury and possibly worse.

My family is grateful to Richard Jewell.