Grieving couple left with questions after fatal collision

WASILLA — Austin Edenfield lay next to Pittman Road, bleeding from his mouth and ears. His eyes were open. He was not moving.

Minutes earlier, the 15-year-old walked out the front door of his house, on his way to a nearby bank to deposit money in his account. He’d wanted to buy something off of Amazon, and maybe get a soft drink after school. He was walking with a friend, who suddenly found himself lying in a ditch, wondering why Austin had pushed him.

Kim Blocker remembers the horrific day her son was killed.

“He had just walked out the door,” she said during an interview with the Frontiersman last week. “We live right there, and I was sitting at my computer, and his friend ran in and said ‘Miss Kim, Austin’s bleeding, he got hit by a truck, he’s bleeding!’”

She rolled her ankle as she stepped off the porch to get to the intersection where the friend — Austin’s fellow Burchell High School student Will Johns — led her. The pain hadn’t stopped her.

When she arrived, someone was performing CPR on her son.

Authorities, responding to the scene at 3:05 p.m., pronounced Austin dead minutes later.

Blocker retreated to the back of a nearby ambulance, and began weeping. Her husband, Ed Blocker, conferred with emergency responders, then climbed in after her. The sobs echoed up and down Pittman Road, until someone closed the ambulance’s rear door, closing the world out for a moment of intimate grief.

Testimony

Kim and Ed Blocker are grappling with the idea that their son’s future — his plans for a career as an engineer, college in Germany, a spring break trip to the Kenai, building a clubhouse on the property, his 16th birthday in March, the Amazon purchase — was gone.

“He had all these plans for himself, and he would tell me ‘Mom, I think two steps ahead all the time,’” Kim Blocker said. “He says ‘If I say it, I’ve already thought about it.’”

She said her son was a remarkable young man in many ways.

“He’d sat me down with one of his best friends a couple days before that and told me how much he appreciated me, that he loved me and how when I was home he felt happy, but when I wasn’t home he felt a little scared,” she said.

Home away from home

The Blockers said Austin had found a home at Burchell, the Mat-Su Borough School District’s alternative high school. Students recently had a gathering with family, including relatives from Georgia who hadn’t seen Austin in two years, and told stories about how Austin had affected their lives.

“It’s odd, but he actually counseled a lot of kids back from the edge of suicide,” Ed Blocker said. “We heard story after story when we were sitting there in Burchell that day.”

Paul Morley, one of Austin’s teachers, wrote an email to them earlier that day.

“Part of what he’s taught me is to not wait to tell that person how they’ve helped, to tell them you love them, or to just be there to listen,” he wrote. “Time is fleeting and so precious.”

The Blockers are still deciding on the details of Austin’s final resting place.

“I still wait for him to walk in through the door,” Kim Blocker said tearfully. “I’m still waiting for him to come in the door because it don’t seem real. I feel like I’m in a nightmare and I’ll wake up at some point. That’s what I feel like.”

Waiting for Justice

The sudden and violent nature of Austin’s death — which remains under investigation by Alaska State Troopers — has left the couple with lingering questions.

Authorities say Bryon Melton, a 28-year-old from Willow, drove the vehicle that killed Austin. Melton did not have a valid driver’s license at the time of the collision, and had cut a deal in court to get out of jail on a separate criminal case about five hours before he struck and killed Austin, according to court records.

The single biggest question outstanding for the Blockers is “What happened?”

The question is particularly pointed because Johns, the closest person to Austin at the time of the collision, didn’t see the oncoming vehicle. Both boys were on the road’s narrow shoulder, walking with traffic. How did Melton’s vehicle end up crossing the white line separating them? They’ve been told there are witnesses to the collision, but haven’t spoken to them.

They’ve called and left messages for Trooper Michael Shelley, who is in charge of the investigation.

“We’ve asked, and Trooper Shelley has responded to some things, but he’s also indicated that the whole investigative process has to run its course before they can really file charges,” Ed Blocker said.

Shelley directed questions to a trooper spokeswoman Beth Ipsen. Generally, troopers are caught between a desire to keep the families informed, and the need not to jeopardize a possible conviction by doing so, Ipsen said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t always tell the family new developments because in the past we’ve had family members that have publicly said ‘This is the state of the investigation,’ and prevented justice from being served,” she said.

Given the nearness and nature of Austin’s death, grief boils quickly into frustration. The Blockers respect troopers, but questioned whether authorities have the resources necessary to do the job. They also question whether Melton should have been allowed back on the roads, and blame what they say are lenient courts for letting him go free.

“Is our system so screwed up that people don’t respect it?” Kim Blocker asked.

Prosecutors have said they can’t predict the behavior of any of thousands of nonviolent offenders who enact similar deals on a daily basis.

The couple still wants more answers.

“Nothing’s gonna bring my son back, but we want to see justice for my child,” Kim Blocker said. “He had his whole life ahead of him.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.