On August 26, 2009, Kristen Belair and her two children, Evan and Julia, were driving to meet some friends at Topsail Beach when they got a flat tire. A retired state policeman pulled over to help, and while he and Kristen were walking alongside their cars, a truck pulling a bulldozer quickly passed another car. Its trailer swung into the breakdown lane, and the bulldozer blade struck Kristen.
Kristen was killed instantly, having been cut in half by the bulldozer blade. Her death certificate listed her cause of death as “traumatic evisceration”. Her young children were in the backseat and saw the whole thing. They have never truly recovered from this horrifying experience.
Kristen’s mother, Sandra, wrote the following poem about Kristen shortly after her death:
“There once was a girl who loved to wear skirts. She loved to spin and have them twirl around her. She loved the color pink and she loved poke-a-dots, and baking and reading Dr. Seuss to the little kids. She had beautiful red hair that she hated as a girl but learned to love as she grew up. She loved ferrets and fish-tanks and little children. She loved music and always had it on in the background, and sometimes in the foreground. She loved dancing and laughing and playing with her children. She loved her friends and family and loved to tease her mother. She loved finding four leaf clovers and was very good at it. She loved Story People by Brian Andreas and was always posting and sharing them. She loved socks, lots and lots of wild patterned socks, but could never find their mates so she just kept them in a big bin and rummaged when she needed a pair. Her fiancé nicknamed her ‘girly girl’ and it stuck. She was always so full of life and lived every minute of it. There was once a girl… I miss her very much.”