After the bombings, Brent Ashworth left town to avoid becoming a target. To his dismay, his 7-year-old son was involved in a serious accident and died just days before the Hofmann trial. Brent shares the details of this tragic loss.
Brent: We had a rule in our house, at the time, that the kids were never allowed on bikes on Sunday. Anyway, we went out on Saturday and the next day, the kids were on bikes. My youngest brother wouldn’t have known that. [My brother Kip and his wife] were staying with our kids, during that time, a couple of days that we were gone. The only hour that they were not there, hour and a half or so, was during the time this accident took place. They had to go down. Their church assignment was to feed the missionaries at the MTC. So, they went down to do their church calling. They left our 12-year-old daughter, Amy Jo, in charge for an hour and a half. Well, boys, you know, the cat’s away… They got on their bikes. At the time, we had these five little boys and two sons born after that. We had nine children all together, two daughters. ..So, the boys are on bikes and we had given John a new little blue bike for his birthday. Sam grabbed it. Our house overlooks the Provo Temple. It was up in Oak Hills area and the road feeds down about a football length from our home into a more major road going down this way. The boys were racing to the corner to see who could outrace each other. Our son, Sam, who had just turned seven, grabbed his big brother John’s bike. He said, “I’ll beat you to the corner, John.”
Brent: Well, he’d taken his big brother’s bike and so John and the other boys were behind him, chasing him down to the corner. Three teenagers in a car, a Camaro, were coming down the feeder road and they’d been up on the hill. It was Sunday. They’d been up on the hill drinking beer and shooting. They’re all 19 years old, should have been on missions but they weren’t ready to go on missions. When they saw our son, the kid in the back seat said that the kid that was driving…decided he could beat the kid and he pushed on the gas and my son hit the windshield and flew over the car into the end of the concrete into this blacktop. They lost control of the car and ended up upside down in the neighbor’s front lawn, going down the hill. It’s a wonder they weren’t badly hurt, the three of them. They crawled out of the car and the car was badly damaged. It had the trunk broken open and there were beer cans and ammo and guns laying all over the front lawn. They got out okay. Our son, looking at him, it looked like he was dead, initially. He had flown over the car and into the street. Our daughter, Amy, could hear the commotion. She ran out there and saw her brother lying in the street. She was, of course, really crying and everything, really bad.
Brent discusses the trying months in which is son hovered between life and death, losing him just days before Brent and his wife were set to testify in the Hofmann trial. Do you think Brent’s son was a third Hofmann victim? Check out our conversation….
