SKOWHEGAN — A group of young Skowhegan residents is planning a toy run and donation cruise Sunday in support of the 2-year-old boy whose mother died when she stepped in front of a tractor-trailer Oct. 4 on Interstate 95 in Penobscot County.
Heidi McGovern, 26, was carrying her 2-year-old son, Enoch, when she walked in front of the truck. McGovern was killed instantly and her son was thrown from her arms. The boy landed in the highway’s passing lane. He was critically injured and was treated at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said McGovern left suicide notes at her home. She had been pregnant at the time, according to her obituary.
McGovern also was the mother of an infant, who was elsewhere at the time of the incident, police said.
Now, Dylan Perkins, 26; his fiancée, Kaitlyn Luce, 22; and friend Zack Ziglar, 27, all of Skowhegan, want to help the boy and his family with cash, gift cards and possibly a scholarship fund.
“(We) all decided after we saw the picture on line of Enoch that he needed our help and our love for kids got our brains going, then we decided on doing a toy/donation cruise for Enoch and his family,” Perkins said in an email to the Morning Sentinel. “He’s a very strong little boy that we want to show we all love and show him he’s loved by so many.”
The event is set for noon Sunday in the parking lot of the Subway sandwich shop in Skowhegan Village Plaza on outer Madison Avenue.
“We invite anyone that wants to join,” Perkins said. “We have heard from a family member of Enoch that they will be overwhelmed with toys so we are pushing to donate money and gift cards and hope to start a scholarship for him, too.”
The entourage will be stopping at the Walmart store in Newport to pick up more people and at Dysart’s Truck Stop in Hermon.
Perkins is a carpenter, working for his father’s business, DBA Builders. Kaitlyn Luce works at Backyard Farms and Zack Ziglar works at Bath Iron Works.
To sign up or to find more information, go to the Facebook event called Toy/Donation run for Enoch.
“We already have a group of trucks and other vehicles that are planning to go and we want to pull together as many people as we can, to show this little boy some love,” the Facebook page reads.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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