Parents Stagger under Grief of Losing 2 Sons in Back-to-Back Deaths: 'I Don't Know What to Do from Here'
William Gage Roberts was 2 years old when he accidentally drowned in a creek less than two months ago. His 6-year-old brother, Ayden James, died in a horrific car crash on Wednesday.
Their parents, Julia and Peter Roberts, have no idea how they will rebuild their lives. They see only the horrible here and now.
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“I don’t know what to do from here,” the boys’ stunned mother told InsideEdition.com Thursday. Her husband is “not handling any of it at all. He’s having a real hard time.”
Peter Roberts was driving Ayden to school Wednesday morning on a two-lane highway in the small Indiana town of Borden when he veered into a roadside ditch, overcompensated and swerved into oncoming traffic, authorities said.
Two vehicles slammed into Roberts’ car, slicing it in half. Ayden was in the back seat. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The father blames himself for Ayden’s death and is wracked by guilt, his wife said.
He suffered a sprained wrist, a sprained ankle and a broken spirit.
Just six weeks ago, while the family was outside working in the yard, Ayden’s little brother, William, toddled off.
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Julia went looking for her young son, thinking he was hiding from her, the way he often did. When she couldn’t find him, “I started to panic and that’s when I called the police,” she said.
Officers came, but also had no luck locating the boy. His parents, with help from other searchers, combed the property for the next 12 hours.
They found the boy facedown in a creek behind the family’s house.
Ayden had his own way of dealing with his little brother’s death. “He sometimes lashed out a little bit,” his mother said.
“Otherwise, he tried to cheer me up most of the time. He was such a sweet boy. Last week, I was crying and he said, ‘Mommy, don’t cry.’’
Her sons, she said, were good kids.
“They loved each other so much. They were best friends. They loved playing together. They loved sports. They were all boy.”
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