A day after a high-speed Amtrak passenger train in Aberdeen killed his 17-year-old daughter, Leon Boddy still has a lot of questions about the circumstances surrounding her death.
Such as why Akilah didn?t take the bus to Aberdeen High as usual Wednesday morning.
Instead, she was walking to school with her boyfriend, Reggie, and another boy a little after 8 a.m. ? about half an hour after classes started.
The three were going down a wooded path toward the train tracks near the Aberdeen Throughway overpass when Akilah realized that she had put her books down at some point along the way and forgotten them, according to Reggie.
She doubled back to get them and was rushing to catch up when she was struck.
The boys made it across the tracks safely.
“She was a beautiful young lady,” her father said Thursday. “She touched a lot of hearts and she spread a lot of love and she will be deeply missed.”
He said the loss of his daughter had not quite hit him yet.
“She was the glue that held this family together,” Boddy said. He said she helped her family by serving as a mediator, baby sitter and comedian during rough times.
“She was a sweet girl, a very sweet girl. Everybody loved her,” said Denise Watters, Akilah?s manager at the McDonald?s on Pulaski Highway in Aberdeen. “Right now it?s so hard to deal with it.”
She was a good student with an artistic flair, said Jayme Hill, Akilah?s 11th-grade U.S. history teacher.
Aberdeen Assistant Principal Michael L. O?Brien said both teachers and students were having a hard time with Akilah?s death.
Asked if the school had plans to try and prevent future accidents like the one that took Akilah?s life, O?Brien said, “It sounds to me like we are going to need to talk to the kids about that.”
Don Morrison, a spokesman for Harford County Public Schools, said the school system does educate younger children about the “dangers of traffic” while walking to school, but the program does not carry over to the secondary schools.
