As his great-grandchildren looked on, a northwest Georgia man died in an accident that his family was struggling Wednesday to believe.
On Monday, Donald Wayne Stephens was on his riding lawn mower pulling a trailer loaded with kids when he overturned on a steep hill outside his Summerville home. Stephens, 68, died as his family looked on and six children were injured during a family gathering for Labor Day.
“We were all there,” Lamonia Collins, Stephens’ daughter-in-law, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Stephens died doing something he had done many times before when the children visited, Collins said. He loved when the great-grandchildren visited, and they loved him back, she said. Stephens often pulled the children in a trailer, Collins said.
“Every time we came over, it was like the grandpa-grandkids thing,” Collins said. “These children were his world. He lived for those kids, all of them.”
The injured kids were taken to the hospital for treatment, but none of the injuries were life-threatening. On Wednesday, family members gathered at the home, comforting each other but still shocked.
“We’re really trying to pull it together and it’s hard on everybody,” Collins said.
Stephens is survived by his wife and numerous other relatives. Funeral arrangements had not been made late Wednesday.
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