BRAZORIA COUNTY, Texas – Memories are now turned to rubble after an EF-2 tornado destroyed a family’s Brazoria County home on Saturday.
KPRC 2 Reporter Corley Peel spoke with Stafnie Brown the day after her wife, 48-year-old Jamie Brown, was killed in the storm.
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The couple lived in the now non-existent property next to Stafnie’s mother’s house. Stafnie said she and her mother rode out the storm in her mother’s small red house next door. She described riding out the storm as being on a roller coaster with no seatbelts.
“You go up with it, you go down, you fly and flop and everything you can do,” said Stafnie Brown.
Stafnie said her wife had just left the red house to grab food from their house. Seconds later, the tornado touched down.
“It happened in seconds,” she said. “The second alert hit and (the tornado) hit right after that, I had no time to hunker down or anything.”
Stafnie opened up the red house door, to find the house Jamie was in, completely gone. She immediately ran to find her wife. Stafnie said her body was found about 100 feet from their house.
“I just took off running. I started screaming her name. I went through the rubble and I was not finding her,” Stafnie said. ”I looked over and I could see her face down in a puddle of water.”
Stafnie helplessly tried to give her wife CPR.
“I knew she was gone,” she admitted. “I had to just try to make me feel comfortable. She had no heartbeat.”
Stafnie said she and Brown have been married for six years and share eight children. She said it was love at first sight.
“She proposed within a week,” Stafnie recalled. “We got married 28 days later. When you know you know.”
Her wife, Jamie is from Kentucky, but the couple recently moved back to Stafnie’s hometown in Brazoria County to take care of her mother. Their nephew, Peter Bochard, also lives in their home but was not at the house during the storm. He could not hold back tears as he spoke about his aunt.
“She was just the best,” Bochard said. “Loving, caring, giving. Would give you the shirt off your back. I can’t even put into words how amazing she was. I look at everything and its just stuff. The main thing I would love is to just be able to hug her.
Stafnie said Jamie was devoted to helping veterans and children with autism. Picking up the pieces of their memories and home will be difficult without the love of her life.
“We will have to live up to what she wanted to do in life,” Stafnie concluded.
The family said the Red Cross is assisting, but they are not sure where they will go next. They are hoping their insurance will cover the damages.