Hundreds mourn 12-year-old’s death

Emily Marshall was 6 when she watched her mother die

By: Linda Seida
   WEST AMWELL — The day before she died, 12-year-old Emily Marshall kept her dad company as he drove to Philadelphia for some medical tests.
   She joked with him and made him laugh, trying to help him through it, making the time pass quickly.
   On the way home, they bought roses and placed them on her mother’s grave in Titusville.
   Now her father, John Marshall, said he takes comfort from knowing "she’s with her mommy now."
   Emily died late Friday afternoon when the all-terrain vehicle she was riding flipped and rolled on top of her at the family’s Linvale-Harbourton Road property.
   It’s the second time tragedy has struck the family. When Emily was 6, she witnessed her mother’s death in an accident at the township’s trash transfer station. Greta Schmidt, 31, was pinned between the trash truck and a pickup truck.
   "It’s a comfort to know she had someone to go to," Mr. Marshall said, fighting back tears. "I’ll never be able to get over it."
   Emily graduated from West Amwell Elementary School and was set to enter seventh grade at South Hunterdon Regional High School in September.
   While she was outside Friday afternoon, her dad said, he had been on the phone with his mother in Florida. His mom told him the post office had mistakenly sent his mail to her address. He was calling the post office to follow up when a friend ran over and told him Emily had been in an accident.
   Mr. Marshall ran outside.
   "The closer I got to her, the way she looked, I think she was gone immediately," he said. "Her heart probably stopped as soon as it rolled on her. It looked like she died the same way her mother did."
   The Hunterdon County prosecutor’s office is investigating. The initial assessment indicates Emily’s death appears to be a "tragic accident," said Dan Hurley, the deputy chief of detectives.
   An autopsy was performed Saturday. Results are not expected for several weeks.
   Emily, despite having four cats, a dog and some fish of her own, often rode the quad toward the edge of the property to visit a stray kitten that wandered over from the nearby woods. That’s what she did Friday.
   Because the family worried she might get the urge to bring home another cat, they didn’t want her to go off toward the woods to see the stray, Mr. Marshall said. Somewhere along the way, her dad found out she still was going to see the kitten.
   "She told me not to tell anybody," he said, grief and tears in each word. "I kept her secret as long as I could."
   Other times, Emily drove off on the quad, taking a book to read at a quiet spot.
   "She found peace down there," he dad said. "She wasn’t a daredevil."
   Mr. Marshall, who is remarried with two stepchildren, was preparing to gather photos of Emily for the viewing Wednesday. He had to unearth them from where they’d been packed away while the house was being remodeled with an addition.
   "We built a great big room for her with a nice view," he said.
   The family’s grief prevented them from returning to the house. They moved into the Inn at Lambertville Station.
   Sunday night, the Station’s parking lot filled with between 150 and 200 neighbors, friends, classmates and their parents for a candlelight vigil. Those who couldn’t find a protected spot by the building huddled with umbrellas in the rain.
   The PTO that organized the vigil didn’t know where it could get enough candles between Saturday and Sunday night. Local churches donated theirs, PTO President Jill Myers said.
   Violinist Nelly Fedorova-Dolgi volunteered to play. She had heard about Emily’s death from a neighbor’s son, who was Emily’s classmate.
   Many of the sixth-grade girls have been together since they heard about the accident. They’ve been working on "picture boards" for Emily’s funeral, Ms. Myers said.
   Administrators from West Amwell Elementary and South Hunterdon made their counselors available to students and their parents Monday. By early afternoon, about 20 students had come in, Superintendent Todd Fay said.
   An award for graduating sixth-graders will be established in honor of Emily, Dr. Fay said.
   He recalled Emily as an "excellent student, very dedicated to her studies. For a sixth-grader, she was mature for her age. She was an excellent writer."
   Martha Kubik is the school’s librarian and teaches a group of gifted and talented students. Emily was one of them.
   "When she was younger, she was quietly radiant," Ms. Kubik recalled. "When she got older, she was just radiant."
   She said Emily was a "person of very strong opinions. She was a dedicated humanitarian. She loved animals."
   In the third grade, she wrote a story the class turned into a play. And she was a voracious reader, sometimes reading three or four books at a time.
   Ms. Kubik said one of the last books to capture her attention was from "The Warriors," a fantasy adventure series about wild cats.
   Emily often smiled.
   "As she got older, her humor came out," said Ms. Kubik, who knew her since kindergarten. "She began to speak up more. It was wonderful to see a young woman who speaks with intelligence and has her own mind."
   She went through different phases, trying on the idea of different occupations. At one time, she wanted to be a writer, and later she thought she wanted to work with animals, and she was very interested in sports, especially soccer, Ms. Kubik recalled.
   "She was just at the point where it could have been anything," she said. "The world was just opening up."
   This summer, Emily spent three weeks in an educational program for gifted and talented students at The College of New Jersey. She played basketball for the Zanya Spa team and also played soccer and softball.
   Ms. Kubik said, "She’s going to be a part of me, I know, for the rest of my life. She’s with everyone who knew her. Someone who is so vibrant, you can’t help if they become a part of you. I can’t even think of her in the past tense. She’s such a vibrancy, an immediacy."
   Dain Silvestri, a 12-year-old friend, said Monday, "Emily and I were best friends. We stuck together through everything, and we were always there for each other. We promised each other that if one of us moved really far away, we would still be friends, no matter what. We had a bond most friends don’t have, and I hope some people can experience that feeling because when you have someone that close to you, it is hard to let them go, and you never think anything would happen to her. I loved her as if she was my sister, and she will always be in my heart."
   The funeral service is scheduled for today, Thursday, when Emily will be buried in the Titusville United Methodist Church, next to her mother.