A grieving mother shared a heartbreaking warning after her four-year-old twin daughters died in an unimaginable tragedy inside their family home in 2023.
Sadie Myers later spoke publicly about the devastating incident, hoping that sharing what happened to her family might prevent another parent from experiencing the same kind of loss. What had seemed like an ordinary household item — a large wooden cedar chest used to store the children’s toys — became the center of a tragedy the family never could have imagined.
Sadie and her husband, Don Starr, had purchased the large cedar chest to keep their children’s stuffed animals and toys organized. Like many parents, they saw it as a practical storage solution.
They never expected it could become a deadly danger.
According to Sadie, she had been at work on the evening of the tragedy while her husband stayed home and put their children to bed. When Sadie returned, she personally checked on the children before the family had dinner and eventually went to bed for the night.
Everything appeared normal.
But sometime later, Sadie believes her twin daughters, Kellan and Aurora, got out of their beds. Perhaps they wanted to play. Perhaps they simply wanted to be together. Whatever their reason, the sisters eventually made their way to the cedar toy chest.
The girls removed nearly all of the stuffed animals from inside it, leaving only a few behind. Sadie later imagined that they may have kept those remaining toys inside to make the chest more comfortable.
Then the twins climbed inside together.
In her emotional account, Sadie described the heartbreaking scene she imagined had taken place that night.
“Friday night the weird place they decided to snuggle up and go back to sleep was in their cedar toy chest that we use to store all their stuffed animals,” she wrote.
“They pulled out all but a couple stuffed animals, I guess they left some to keep it comfy in there, then they laid inside head to toe with one arm each over their twin and I’m assuming said ‘good night kell kell’ and ‘night night sissy’…”
The image was devastating for their mother: two little sisters, side by side, apparently comfortable and unaware of the danger surrounding them.
Sadie believed that sometime during the night, one of the girls may have moved or kicked in her sleep.
That movement, she said, may have caused the heavy wooden lid to fall closed.
What happened next was something Sadie said she had never known was possible.
“Sometime during their sleep one of them must have moved or kicked during a dream and it caused the lid of this old wooden cedar chest to close,” she explained.
Sadie said she later learned that some older wooden toy chests could become extremely difficult to escape from once their lids closed. She also believed the enclosed space prevented enough fresh air from reaching the children and muffled sounds from inside.
“Something I did not know and I’m sure many others don’t know is that most wooden toy chests once closed are AIR TIGHT and also sound proof,” she wrote.
