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MIAMI TOWNSHIP – Natalie Fossier couldn’t wait to get outside Tuesday.
The 10-year-old girl bundled herself in a jacket and winter hat, fashioned a sled from an old cardboard box and headed out to explore her snow-covered Miami Township neighborhood.
She was pulling her dog, Angel, home in the sled when her mother heard cracking tree limbs and Natalie’s scream
In an instant, she’d become the only local fatality of Tuesday’s winter storm.
“It’s just a total freak accident,” said Russ Stansell Jr., Natalie’s older brother. “You just don’t imagine something like that would happen when you let your kid play in the front yard.”

Firefighters say the accident occurred at 2:20 p.m. when a branch from a towering white pine in Natalie’s front yard snapped under the weight of snow and ice. The limb crashed about 20 feet to the ground and knocked down several other branches as it fell.

Natalie was walking up her driveway, pulling her dog in the cardboard sled, when the falling limbs buried her.

Her mom, Melisa, was shoveling snow a few feet away, but she didn’t know immediately what had happened. In the split second it took to turn around, all she could see was the pile of branches.

“Natalie!” she shouted.

Neighbors rushed to help. The dog, a small Bichon Frise, darted out of the debris and ran around the yard.

“We lost Natalie! We lost Natalie!” her mom repeated as neighbors frantically searched.

Moments later, they found the girl’s lifeless body and pulled her from beneath the branches. One neighbor tried CPR, but Natalie never regained consciousness.

The child’s death hit friends and neighbors hard. As a work crew labored to remove the fallen tree limbs Wednesday, several gathered at the family home to remember Natalie.

They described her as a smart, loving child who had extraordinary empathy for others, even those she’d never met.

She was the kind of kid who cut her long brown hair so she could donate it to cancer patients.

“She was a one-in-a-million girl,” Stansell said.

Stansell spoke for the family Wednesday while Natalie’s parents made funeral arrangements. Her father, David Fossier, was in Indianapolis on business when the accident occurred and drove eight hours through the storm to get to the hospital late Tuesday.

He was met there by a chaplain and his grieving family.

Nann Grome, who lives across the street, helped pull Natalie out of the branches Tuesday. Her eyes were still red from crying when she talked about the girl Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re still in shock,” said Grome, who has two children. “I keep thinking how many times we had seen Natalie outside, running and playing.

“She’s going to be missed.”

She said Natalie was a fixture in the neighborhood, always out and about regardless of the season or the weather.

“She was just a great girl,” Grome said. “She wanted to chase butterflies. She wasn’t afraid of any bug or slimy thing. Natalie loved being active.”

Her brother said Natalie rarely watched television, preferring books and the outdoors. He said it was no surprise she wanted to be outside Tuesday, and only natural she took the dog with her.

“They were like sisters,” Stansell said. “That dog was her pride and joy.”

He said his sister, who would have celebrated her 11th birthday on March 4, would have spent a snow day home from school with her mom Wednesday. He said they planned to make chocolate fondue for Valentine’s Day.

As he spoke, Stansell watched workers remove the last of the tree limbs from the front yard.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” he said, shaking his head. “If you’ve got kids, tell them you love them.”