'She loved serving': Family mourns mom killed during Tallahassee tornado outbreak

Carolyn Benton and her fiance, Ed Sutton, were just getting up Friday morning when the wind started to howl and the rain began to beat against their mobile home off Aenon Church Road.

Ed, a landscape foreman, stepped out of the bedroom to get a better look at the weather outside as Carolyn, a restaurant manager and mother of three grown children, lay in bed.

Neither of them knew that a big storm was coming — or that tornadoes, relatively rare for Tallahassee — were even a possibility. They had no inkling that their time together was about to come to a sudden and horrific end.

The lights flickered off before Carolyn, 46, uttered the last words Ed would ever hear her say.

“There goes the power,” she said.

In a terrifying instant, an oak towering next to the house gave way from the ground and toppled onto the roof, smashing the bedroom and crushing everything under its heft.

Ed, who was knocked off his feet, crawled toward the bedroom to get to Carolyn. One door wouldn’t budge, but he managed to crack open another, only to find the ceiling caved in and the bedroom in splinters. He couldn’t tell where Carolyn was — or hear a sound coming from her.

“I didn’t even see the tree falling,” he told the Tallahassee Democrat. “It just fell. I’m trying to scramble for my life and call for Carolyn. And I was just praying that she would say, ‘Come help me.’ But she never did.”

Carolyn was killed in a freak storm system that produced three tornadoes and 100-mph straight-line winds, causing widespread destruction in Leon County that has already surpassed Hurricane Michael.

Their mobile home was located about a mile from one of the two strongest tornadoes and about a quarter mile from the other, according to the National Weather Service in Tallahassee. Her death was not believed to have been caused directly by the twisters.

Woman dodges downed power lines, poles running to get to her mom

After the tree fell, Ed made a frantic call to 911 and more calls to family to deliver the devastating news. Caratoshia Avant, the oldest of Carolyn's two daughters, got a call from her grandmother, who was in shock and screaming. She rushed to the scene but could only get as close as West Tennessee Street, about a mile away.

“I parked my car at the store down there and ran,” Caratoshia said.

Dodging mangled power lines and splintered poles along the way, she cut through the neighborhood as she made her way to the house.

Ed said he and the rest of the family didn’t know at first whether Carolyn was alive or dead. It took a while — about 45 minutes, he estimated — for first responders to arrive, which he said was understandable given the unfolding emergency and blocked roads.

It took several more hours for rescue crews to hoist the tree off the house and cut their way to Carolyn, while the family stood outside, watching and waiting for news. Finally, one of the rescue workers confirmed the worst: Carolyn was deceased.

The reality of her death was still sinking in Monday as the family, including Benton's son, Keyon Wilson, and her younger daughter, Asia Charlton, gathered to save what they could from the ruins of the mobile home on Aenon Lane and pack it into a moving van.

“It’s hard,” Ed said. “You really can’t explain the hurt you feel.”

They reminisced about Carolyn, who in one of her last acts on earth helped a homeless couple she'd befriended at a previous job at the Flying J travel center in Midway. She often gave the man and woman food, cash and money for showers. On Thursday night, she took the woman shopping at Walmart and picked up the bill.

“She was always doing for people,” her fiance said. “She was such a lovely person.

'She loved serving people'

Carolyn, originally from Trenton, New Jersey, grew up around Tallahassee and went to Rickards High School before trying her hand as a cosmetologist. She worked at numerous restaurants over the years, including Popeyes and Bojangles. Years ago, she worked at the Winn-Dixie in Monticello, where some of her family is from.

“She had a great attitude toward the people, the customers, that made her so good and what she was doing,” Ed said. “She really, really loved what she did because she loved serving people. She was very good at serving and taking care of people.”

Carolyn and Ed attended Salem Baptist Church on Springsax Road and were planning to become members. Before that, she was a member of New Jerusalem Baptist Church. She was trying to rearrange her work schedule so she could attend Sunday service more often.

“She was very religious," Ed said. “She loved the Lord.”

Carolyn, who also loved to cook, made baked beans, macaroni and cheese, potato salad and other sides to go with Ed’s barbecue. When the kids were younger and still at home, she’d make a special dish she called “Sausage Stuff.”

“She made it with sausage and tomatoes and corn and put it over rice and gave us corn bread with it,” her daughter said. "She was solid with stuff like that.”

Caratoshia said she’ll miss the long conversations she had with her mom and her words of advice.

“Her just motivating me and telling me it’s going to be OK,” she said. “You’ve got to keep God first. Don’t let stuff worry you that you have no control over. She was a really uplifting person.”

'I don't know what I'm going to do'

Ed and Carolyn, who’d been together four years, hadn’t set a wedding date but planned to soon. They were looking forward to attending a family event in South Florida, where they planned to wear matching outfits made by Mildred Wilson, the mother of Carolyn’s former husband.

Though Mildred was no longer officially her mother-in-law, Carolyn had told her she always would be.

“I had spoken to her the day before,” Mildred said. “It could be two or three years before I saw her, or two or three months — she always had that upbeat attitude. She loved me. She never forgot the family.”

Carolyn’s loved ones tried to save what they could from the home on Monday, taking old photographs off the wall. Caratoshia said she was hoping to find purses that her mom loved to collect.

Along with his wife-to-be and the roof over his head, Ed lost his clothing and other belongings in the storm. His boss put him up in a hotel through Friday, and he reached out to one nonprofit for help but said he hasn't gotten any yet. With no blood relatives in the area, he wasn't sure where he'd stay starting this weekend.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

Caratoshia said she was trying to be strong and not cry in front of her brother and sister. Coming to terms with the loss of their mom will “take time,” she said.

“I’m going to try to keep it together for everybody,” she said. “I know she wouldn’t want us to be crying and sad. She would want us to be happy and rejoice. We’re going to take it one day at a time as a family and get through this.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee family mourns mother of three killed in tornado outbreak