A community mourns: Community rocked by news of another life lost in Byron tragedy

On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 15, 7-year-old Olivia Blackmer lost the fight for her life in a hospital bed at Primary Children’s Hospital in Utah. Up until her death on Saturday, Olivia was the sole survivor of four girls believed to be shot by their mother, Tranyelle Harshman, at the family home in Byron, on February 10. Harshman appeared to have taken her own life after shooting her four girls, ages 2 through 9. She died at a hospital in Billings a few days later.

“I know this isn’t the update people were hoping for, and we are absolutely gutted to make it, but we needed time to process what had happened before we let the world know of the tragic passing of Olivia yesterday afternoon at 3:44 p.m.,” wrote Quinn Blackmer on social media. He is the girl’s biological father. “The amount of devastation we feel and are going through is so much. Please give all families involved our time and space during this extremely difficult time in our lives.” 

The unfathomable tragedy rocked not only Byron and adjacent communities, but communities across the state and beyond. Two GoFundMe pages, one for Cliff Harshman, the father of the two youngest children, and one for Quinn Blackmer, the father of the two older children, raised a combined total of more than $240,000 as of Tuesday. The proceeds will help pay for funeral, medical and other related expenses.

Olivia’s struggle for survival touched the hearts of many. On Friday, a prayer vigil was held in front of the emergency room entrance at North Big Horn Hospital, where Olivia was treated before being taken by a medical helicopter for advanced care of her life-threatening injuries. Vigils were also held in Byron and Cowley. A campaign was started to leave a porch light on in support of her fight for survival. The porch lights became a symbol of hope throughout the north end of the county. That hope was lost with Olivia’s passing on Saturday afternoon.

Word spread quickly after the news broke on social media, affecting those who knew and loved Olivia as well as those who didn’t know her but were moved by her perseverance under such heartbreaking circumstances.

The family expressed gratitude through social media posts for the outpouring of community support.

“From the bottom of our hearts we want to thank every single person that has donated and prayed and fasted for us and our family and our beautiful Olivia,” Quinn Blackmer posted on Facebook. “Your kindness and generosity has been so much, and we just ask that you continue to pray and keep us all in your thoughts. The peace I find is knowing that my babies don’t have to be apart from each other and they can also be with their other sisters.”

Law enforcement

The shooting is one of the most intense incidents local law enforcement officials has dealt with in recent Big Horn County history. Though trained to respond, it’s relatively uncommon for first responders in this area to respond to this violent a crime scene. It began with a call law enforcement officials now believe was made by Tranyelle to Big Horn County dispatch at about 1:30 on a wintery Monday afternoon. The caller advised the 911 operator that four children had been shot in a residence on the south side of Byron, adding that she could be found by first responders in her upstairs bedroom, as she planned to do the same to herself.

The idea of a mother shooting all four of her children and then turning the gun on herself is so unfathomable that even Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn and other first responders thought, at first, it could be a hoax. Nonetheless, Blackburn and Deputy Jeff Angell, who were in Lovell at the time, arrived on the scene within four minutes. Other nearby officers, including additional sheriff’s deputies, Lovell police officers, a highway patrolman and school resource officers, responded to the call within seconds of one another. Blackburn said those arriving first gathered as a group where, based on years of training, they quickly developed a “short plan” for entering the premises as safely as possible.

“We didn’t know what we were walking into,” he explained. “We had to be prepared for anything.”

What they found was something no human being could prepare for, a crime scene so gut-wrenching that it will affect them the rest of their lives. Five victims. Four of them young children. Two deceased. Two children severely injured but still showing signs of life and their mother with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

When the second wave of first responders arrived, Blackburn said officers were already at work attending to survivors. One of the victims, a 2-year-old, died within minutes of ambulances arriving. Blackburn said, though it wasn’t his “first rodeo” in terms of horrific crime scenes he has witnessed in his 40 years in law enforcement, it is one that affected him emotionally and one that he will not forget.

“The incident is still far too raw and far too sensitive for our first responders to process,” said Blackburn. “They’re still trying to make sense of this themselves, so don’t expect us to be talking about specifics. Only those who have been there can understand the gut-wrenching feeling of trying to process a situation like this. Nobody can prepare you for that first realization that it was not a hoax.”

Blackburn added, “This is the kind of thing that changes a person inside. It’s the kind of thing that forces a person to draw on his wits, on his faith and community support. Fortunately, most of us have great families and live in great communities. Everyone has been so wonderful, and we haven’t even begun to thank the community for their support. It’s a blessing we have a community standing behind us.”

Due to very small staffing, first responders are not able to take time off from work to recover from the trauma of witnessing such an unthinkable incident.

“We are working rapidly and diligently to make sure everyone is taken care of and we care for each other,” Blackburn said.

That includes peer-to-peer debriefings and individual mental health support. He said he has received calls from other sheriffs across the state offering to help in any way they can, noting that he and his team would do the same for others whenever necessary.

“Some people mistakenly think that we are jaded or cold or callous because of the volume of things we see, but I don’t care who you are, having to see stuff like that is hard, even for the toughest of us,” Blackburn said. “We have families. We have loved ones, too. A lot of the deputies saw their own children and grandchildren in the faces of the children they were trying to save that day. Like anyone else we relate what we see to our own life experiences and it makes it even more difficult. This isn’t the kind of job you do for the money, because the money could never be enough to go through something like this. This isn’t just a job. It’s more of a calling for us. We do it because we care about people.”

School staff and students

How do you explain the tragic death of two of their classmates to young children, some as young as 5 years old? This was the formidable task Rocky Mountain Elementary School principal Eric Honeyman and counselor Lindsey Sponsel faced in the aftermath of the tragic event that took the lives of a first and third grader who were students at the school.

“You speak from the heart; you speak from a place of love for them,” Principal Honeyman, a former kindergarten teacher, said. “We are being very cautious and gentle with our words, while at the same time very sincere with our words. 

“This is why the relationships you build with children are important. Already having an established relationship helps in difficult situations like this, because they are invested. They love you, they believe in you and they already trust you. I think that kind of relationship helps because you can come to them with a full heart.”

He said he and school staff purposely held back telling the children details about the incident. He said they were especially careful not to use any “unclear language.”

“We felt it was up to the parents to go over that in whatever depth they felt appropriate for their children,” he explained.

Honeyman and Sponsel sat cross-legged on the floor with Olivia’s first-grade class this week, breaking the news of the tragedy as gently and as humanely possible.

“We talked about how Olivia was a fighter and about how she was a good friend,” said Honeyman. “Then we talked about the fact that she had passed and went into how she will now be with her sisters.”

Honeyman said he and Sponsel then talked about coping strategies and encouraged the children to talk about their feelings. He said five counselors have been made available on campus to both students and staff, including Sponsel, who is the regular staff counselor for the school, and four others borrowed from nearby schools in Lovell and Burlington. He said a highly trained therapy dog named “Zeke” was borrowed from Lovell Middle School to comfort the children and to help them open up about their feelings.

“Sometimes it’s hard for kids to open up to people they don’t know; having the dog present helps children be more comfortable with talking about their feelings,” he explained.

Honeyman said he and Sponsel talked to the children about the different kinds of feelings they might experience following this type of loss.

“We told the children that sometimes feelings are sad, sometimes they are angry,” Honeyman said. “We explained that sometimes we want to be jokesters, sometimes we want to be mean. Different emotions come with this kind of tragedy, and these are all normal. Then we gave them names of people in the building they can talk to – the teachers and the counselors we have on hand.”

Honeyman said everyone is hurting at the school, and the children are helping the teachers get through this as much as the teachers are helping the students.

“It’s a family approach,” he said. “We are giving the children time to think about it and to ask questions and to talk about their feelings. The same for staff. It will take time.”

Honeyman led a staff meeting early in the week, where he announced Olivia’s passing while reading from a prepared written message. He said writing the message down helped him articulate his feelings about the situation.

“Please understand, I’m typing this up to settle my emotions,” he read. “Words to describe what’s going on in our world right now is heartbreaking, tragic and devastating. These are just a few words that are crossing our minds as we meet this morning as a family. I’m so sorry that, as a school family, we must endure this loss of one of our own, but amid this sorrow, I am forever grateful to have a team like you to navigate this hardship together. The biggest priority for today is for you to take care of yourself and your students and to lean on one another for support. We will support our students in every way we can. Today (Monday) will not be easy, but with all of us helping each other, it will help us all get through this very difficult time.”

Honeyman said the school has received much support from the community and expressed his gratitude for that support.

“I want to thank the EMS and the hospital and other first responders for everything they have done for these two little girls,” he said. “I know they did everything they could to help them. I appreciate them and all the people who have rallied their support for them, for our teachers, for our students, for our school and for all the families involved.

“Also, I hope people understand how much we love these kids and we want to protect them. I think every teacher, not just in our building but nationwide, loves their students and will do anything and everything necessary to help them through anything.”