The last thing Lynn Townsend remembers of the night of November 22, 2004 is approaching the Shreveport Cross Lake Bridge in her 2004 silver Honda convertible with the top down and her 14-year old daughter, Caitlin Ann, at her side. Just a couple of carefree girls out for a spin with hard rock star Lenny Kravitz providing the music.
Then it was fade to black.
Police reports provide the details of what happened next. After crossing the bridge, Lynn lost control of her car, crossed the median and hit another vehicle head on. She was thrown from the car, sustained a broken collarbone and head injuries that impaired vision in one eye. Her blood alcohol count was .17, nearly twice the limit.
Caitlin’s injuries were more severe, and three hours later, at 1 a.m., she died at LSU hospital where they had been taken following the accident. Two of the four people in the other car were injured and taken to Willis-Knighton South.
At age, 34, Lynn’s life for the past 20 years had been, by any objective analysis, a train wreck. Except for what Caitlin and her younger sister Marie, then eight, brought to her life, the rest was non-stop drug abuse and a procession of men, most of them as sick as she was.
There were moments when she almost put it together as a wife and mother, but they were brief. At the end she had become a successful business woman making lots of money with her own beauty shop while spending $8,000 of it a month on drugs.
Five months before Caitlin’s death Lynn had overdosed on drugs and was taken to Schumpert Medical Center where she had a brief encounter with God. It seemed to mark the beginning of the end of her reckless lifestyle, but still she couldn’t completely let go and the result was the loss of her child, a parent’s worst nightmare.
After the accident, Lynn spent nine days in the hospital, part of it in intensive care and missed her daughter’s funeral at Kings Temple United Pentacostal Church. When she got out, with a possible 12 to 15 year prison term facing her, she gave up custody of Marie to Marie’s father, Tony. She had been charged with first-degree vehicular negligence and vehicular homicide.
A two-year sentence
The judge sentenced Lynn to two years at Shreveport’s Lake Providence prison. She spent her first six weeks at Caddo Parish Detention Center, “a frightening experience” before going to Lake Providence where she served in the mess hall, taught school and became a trustee.
She was released on March 16, 2006 after 16 months, and within three months she fell back into the drug and alcohol addictions that had begun when she was 15 years old.
This time it was much worse, she says, and she ended up being detoxed at MidArk Substance Abuse Service Center in Little Rock for two weeks and then spent five weeks in treatment at Recovery Centers of Arkansas and six weeks at a transition house, Chance Sobriety. After that she was an outpatient in a Suboxone and therapy program at UAMS.
Lynn told her story to me in the hope that it would help others, give meaning to the loss of her daughter and help her to heal from the crushing grief of her loss.
Lynn was born in Baton Rouge in 1970. Her parents divorced when she was six, and she moved around a bit.
A heavy drug user by the time she was 16, Lynn would frequently party all night and although she was on the pill, she got pregnant the summer after she graduated from high school. Lynn moved in with a man (call him Steve), also a drug user, and at first she took to the role of mate and homemaker in their duplex.
She got a job at Payless Shoes at minimum wage that summer, quit using drugs and prepared for the birth of her child. Caitlin was born the following March, and there were problems. The baby spent her first two weeks in intensive care, but when Ashley took her home things improved.
“I was a good mom,” Ashley says. “We moved from our duplex to a Town house and then to a “cute apartment” in West Shreveport. Both worked and Ashley started nursing school.
Truly a gift
“Caitlin was a wonderful child from the moment she came home,” Lynn says. “She was truly a gift. Why I was blessed with her I don’t know. She was the perfect child.”
Caitlin’s obituary reported that she attended Byrd High School and was a ninth grade honor student involved in the Gateway program for accelerated students. She would, it said, “best be remembered for her kind and loving spirit.”
At nursing school, Lynn began having an affair, and her relationship with Steve began to unravel. They split up, had several stormy attempts at reconciliation and eventually got together again briefly. But, by then, Lynn was heavily into cocaine and ecstasy again and soon took up with another man (call him Terry). He had a “mob persona” that attracted Lynn, and he was, among other things, a professional gambler.
Lynn moved in with him, got pregnant again and they were married in Las Vegas in the summer of 1995. Caitlin was born in 1996. Shortly after, she left Terry, then went back to him, and in 1998 began to work at Mabry’s and Ultimate Appearances hair salons.
By 2001, Lynn had had a couple of boy friends, a breast implant, a 400 to 500 pill a month habit and was turning her apartment into a hair salon of her own—Lynn’s Hair Design.
The salon became a huge financial success with a wealthy and influential clientele and Lynn kicked up the excesses in her life a couple of notches with her trips, jewels, expensive cars, parties and more and more drugs.
“I felt ten feet tall and bullet proof with no care or worries and mean as a snake. And I was hanging out with people who were successful, screwed up and with no morals…I could not have a healthy relationship because I was so sick mentally and physically.”
At her Fourth of July party in 2004, Lynn passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. A week later. She overdosed, and the maid found her lying face down on the floor and not breathing. She frantically called 911, and an ambulance took her back to the hospital and put her in a ward with someone to watch her every minute.
Her first visitor was a lady “who drew me a picture and told me that Psalm 91 was for me.”
Psalm 91 begins, “The one who lives under the protection of the most high dwells in the shadow of the All Mighty.”
Encountering God
After the lady left, Lynn said, “I had an encounter with God while I was in the shower.” She says she felt a heavy hand pushing down on the top of her head, “basically telling me to get on my knees,” and I ended up in the corner of the shower sobbing.
Later, her mother and Lauren came to see her and they reread Psalm 91 and cried together.
“We truly felt God’s presence,” Lynn says, “and an overwhelming need to cry. I felt closer to God than I had in such a long time.”
Ashley agreed to got to rehab, but after detoxing for five days, she felt she was out of the woods and could handle her life. More partying, drinking and drugging followed.
On the last day of her life, Caitlin was busy with her mother at the shop cutting hair and doing chores.
At the end of the day, Lynn says, “I remember telling Connie’s daughter to run inside and get me those Miller Lites. She brought back about six, and I let Caitlin drink a Corona. I also had some Goldschlager—not a lot. I thought I just had a buzz.”
Before they left, Lynn said, “Connie made us a cup of soup, and Caitlin and I went on our trip around Shreveport.”
Editor’s note: Lynn and Caitlin Ann Townsend are not their real names, but the story is real. Lynn briefly worked for our One Day at a Time publication and moved in with a young doctor at UAMS and then disappeared. I ran across her quite by accident on Face Book last week. It didn’t look good.
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