April 13, 2008

Forty-year-old Nicole Waring stood at the edge of an icy brook in
Wardsboro, Vermont, just about 100 yards from her parents home. A mother of two young girls, her children, six-year-old Dakota Waring and two-year-old Grace Waring stood at her side. Why she did what she did next is a puzzle to everyone.

Earlier that day, Nicole had been reported missing from her parent’s home in Wardsboro, where she and the girls were staying. She had alarmed her parents by leaving home on foot at around 1:00 in the morning that Saturday, her two children in tow. It had also concerned them that they had left the home with the girls as is, making no special preparations. Her family reported that she had been acting strangely, and police began forming a search party to locate them.

Just as troopers were getting started, State Police Sargent Robert McCarthy spotted Nicole standing along the edge of the brook with her older child, Dakota. The younger girl was nowhere in sight. As Sargent McCarthy approached and tried to talk to her, Nicole waded into the brook carrying Dakota. The stream, which was normally placid, was swollen with rain and spring snow-melt. As a result, the current was moving along swiftly.

Nicole ignored the officer as he approached. Standing in waist deep water next to a rock, she held her daughter. As McCarthy tried to reach out for her, she pushed away from the rock and plunged into the icy-cold brook with Dakota clinging in her arms. Mother and daughter were swept away together, carried downstream by the swift current.

Rescue workers found the bodies of Nicole and young Dakota later on that day. Two-year-old Grace was found a day later on Sunday. All had been washed up downstream along the shores of the brook. Rescue workers reported the water in the brook to be about three feet deep on Sunday when they measured, but authorities say it was much deeper than that on Saturday when the three were swept away. Preliminary autopsies on the six-year-old and her mother indicated that they died from drowning.

“For whatever reason, it was a deliberate action,” Vermont State Police Captain David Covell said, reporting on the situation. “The sergeant tried to communicate with her. She didn’t respond at all. He was in close enough proximity that she should’ve recognized his presence.”

The captain stopped short of calling it a murder-suicide, though every indication is that’s exactly what occurred. “I don’t know particularly what issues were upsetting her, but she had been exhibiting some unusual behavior the day prior to and during the time Sgt. McCarthy located her,” Covell said.

Nicoles husband and father of the girls, Michael Waring, was in
Massachusetts at the time of the incident. Police had located him and informed him of the tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the entire family. It’s just another sad example of how depression can be deadly.