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Kentucky tornadoes: 2-month-old girl dies after taken off life support

DAWSON SPRINGS, Ky. — A Kentucky family is grieving after their 2-month-old daughter died from injuries sustained after a tornado ripped through their home in Dawson Springs on Friday.

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Oaklynn Koon died Monday at a hospital in Louisville after being taken off life support, WHAS-TV reported. The child initially survived while strapped in a car seat, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. But after doctors discovered bleeding in her brain and her condition deteriorated, the girl’s parents, Douglas and Jackie Koon, decided to take her off life support.

“I didn’t want her to suffer any longer than what she was suffering,” Douglas Koon told reporters. “So, it’s just a hard decision to make. I’m going to miss absolutely everything about her.

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“I’m going to miss her crying in the middle of the night, waking me up. I’m going to miss her not wanting to be put down, wanting her daddy and mommy to hold her,” Douglas Koon added. “I’m gonna just miss her in general.”

The Koon family had taken shelter from the tornado at the home of Jackie Koon’s mother, Jackie Koon said in a Facebook post.

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They were hiding in the bathroom when the winds from the tornado sucked them out of the house and blew them across the street.

Douglas Koon said he believed Oaklynn would be safer in the car seat, but he did not anticipate the ferocity of the storm.

“We felt it was more protection for her,” Douglas Koon told WHAS. “Then all of a sudden as if time stood still. It felt like you were being tossed around like a rag doll in a sack. It felt somebody was standing and hitting me with a baseball repeatedly and you can’t hear anything but destruction.”

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“We all went flying and ended up way on the other end of our neighbor’s house,” Jackie Koon told the Herald-Leader.

Koon said his mother-in-law, 11-year-old son Bentley Koon and 4-year-old Dallas Koon were buried in debris, WHAS reported. Dallas Koon was bleeding from his head and was sent to an Indiana hospital but has since been released, according to the television station.

His other son, Jackie Koon, and his mother-in-law received stitches and were later discharged from the hospital, NBC News reported.

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Oaklynn’s health, however, began to decline and died Monday, according to a GoFundMe page set up by Douglas Koon’s niece, Sheila Rose.

“God, this doesn’t seem real,” Jackie Koon wrote on Facebook.

“It’s the most traumatic thing I’ve ever been through,” Douglas Koon told MSBC. “I felt like I was helpless in protecting my kids against it.”