SLIDELL, La. — A Slidell family will spend this Christmas without their beloved son. He was a man of strong faith, who recently brought some of his own clothes to the homeless. And now they have an emotional plea for safety changes to a bridge that has claimed his life, and too many others.
Hilda Pichon-Kidd got a pre-dawn phone call from a doctor on November 11, one that is every parent's nightmare.
“‘I have some bad news. It was a head-on collision. Your grandson Ameer is in stable condition, but we couldn't save Farrell,’” Hilda Pichon-Kidd remembers the doctor saying. “And I’m like I just dropped the phone and started screaming," she said.
Her son, Farrell Dupre-Pichon, 47, and grandson, Ameer Pichon, 20, were coming from their overnight work shifts, crossing the Highway 11 overpass in Slidell, when it happened.
“I just try to replay it in my head over and over, to try to figure out well what happened, what actually happened, Pichon-Kidd said. "To this day, I don't even know who hit Farrell. I haven't received an accident report. I haven't heard from anyone,” she said.
The bridge is nearly a century old. It has a blind curve, no shoulder, and no room in the center for even the slightest correction.
“I know personally, people who lost their lives on it, or had major accidents, and it's very important to me. And it's a priority to see if something can be done about it,” said Jimmy Strickland, St. Tammany Parish Councilman for District 14.
St. Tammany Councilmen Jimmy Strickland and Pat Burke, say they want safety upgrades like, lights, rumble strips, and speed controls, or even make it one way until the state funds are available to build the new four-lane one.
“The constituents are saying that sometimes they're afraid to go across this bridge," Pat Burke, St.Tammany Parish Councilman for District 8. "They're saying they're taking alternative routes, taking them a couple of miles out of their way, because they don't want to go on that bridge,” he said.
In the last three decades, there have been more than 120 crashes on the bridge, and travel across it has taken the lives of six people.
The Kidd family says enough is enough. "Close it! Yes, tear it down. Yes," said Bryan Kidd, Farrell’s stepfather. "No other family should have to go through what we're going through,” he said.
Their grandson is out of the hospital and had to have major abdominal surgery and a rod was put in his back for a fractured spine. He starts physical therapy soon so he can have the ability to walk again, but he'll never have time again with his dad.
“Right now, he says, ‘Mimi, I'm depressed a lot, you know, and I can't sleep.’ He says, Mimi, I couldn't save my dad," Pichon-Kidd said. "I tried to save him, but I couldn't save my dad,’” she said.
“Farrell's a very loving young man to the whole family, and was loved by the family, and for such a tragedy to happen like that. It was gut-wrenching,” said Pichon-Kidd.
Farrell's funeral was the week of Thanksgiving.
“It was my first Thanksgiving without Farrell because he always came over for gumbo,” said his mother.
And this mother, who now knows the greatest loss, says she'll advocate for a new bridge in her son's name until she takes her last breath.
In October, the St. Tammany Parish government gave the state 19 road projects that are needed. The Highway 11 overpass is the second-highest priority, after bridges over Pearl River on Highway 90.
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