The Rev. Ashley McCoy-Bruce, left, speaks at a community service held in honor of Carly and Sawyer Simpson at Dacusville Elementary School last Thursday.

‘We’re helping each other get through this’

Carly Ashelyn Simpson

By Nicole Daughhetee

Courier Staff

In the early morning hours of May 14, tragedy struck the Dacusville community when 7-year-old Carly Simpson and her brother Sawyer Simpson, 5, were found shot dead in their beds. Shot in the head, their father, Michael Simpson, 34, remains hospitalized in serious condition, while their mother, Anna Simpson, 35, faces murder charges in their deaths after her release from the hospital. Dacusville Elementary, the school both children attended, held a

Sawyer Russell Simpson

memorial service in their honor last Thursday evening. At left and below are transcripts from the speakers at the event.

The Rev. Ashley McCoy-Bruce

We are here tonight because Dacusville, the Simpson and Brown families, Dacusville Elementary and Pickens County have suffered a tremendous loss that has altered our lives in ways we have yet to fully understand.

I’m here to unify us in our faith and to speak as a mother. My children are raised in Dacusville. My sons graduated from this school. My daughter is a fourth grader here. We have worked together because we saw a need to gather quickly to express our heartfelt sympathy for the deaths of two beloved children, our concerns for a critically wounded father and for the soul of a broken mother.