ROSEBURG, Ore. – The employer of a woman whose child died after being left unattended inside a vehicle in Roseburg is speaking out.
According to the Roseburg Police Department, on June 21 a 21-month-old girl was left alone inside a vehicle parked in a lot adjacent to Evergreen Urgent Care on Edenbower Boulevard.
Police were alerted to the situation at about 4:12 p.m., several hours after the girl was left. First responders arrived and took the girl to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The girl’s mother, identified by police as 38-year-old Roseburg resident Nicole Engler, was taken into custody and charged with manslaughter in the second degree.
Engler is a nurse practitioner at Evergreen Family Medicine. Recently, one of her co-workers came out in her support after the tragic incident, saying June 21 was the day Engler “fell into hell.”
The following Facebook post—attributed to Tim Powell M.D.—was published on June 23:
June 21 was the day Nicole fell into hell. She didn’t realize she was so close to the edge. None of us do. If we don’t see the walls when they are standing, how can we see them when they fall?
Remy was such a beautiful little girl with her strawberry blond hair gorgeous eyes and mischievous smile. For a 38 year old woman whose greatest desire was to be a mother, this only child was life’s most precious gift and her heart’s desire. For those of us at Evergreen Family Medicine, we loved the pictures she would bring in to show us on her phone and the stories about Remy’s antics. Mostly we enjoyed seeing Nicole’s delight in being a mother. We loved Remy, though only a shadow of the magnitude her mother lived for.
Nicole worked. Many mothers do. She is a nurse practitioner at our clinic and a wonderful one. Her patients love her. Her passion of caring is in evidence every day. As she hurried to work that day, her mind was already jumping to the tasks ahead. She was out of her routine as the usual child care plans had been altered.
That day was the usual flurry of semi controlled chaos we call a clinic. She finished with a sense of relief and satisfaction as she approached her car to go pick up her child. The moment she looked into that back seat and saw her baby still haunts me. It was the moment the walls fell down. All the way to hell. The horror of our worst nightmare magnified a thousand times coursed through her like an electric current. It has never left. It never will. That’s how hell works.
So many questions. So few answers. We seek consolation and coherence. So repulsed are we at what happened that we need to condemn in order to feel safe ourselves.” I would never do that. It couldn’t happen to me.” We smile as we think of the time we left the milk in the back seat, backed over the tricycle in the driveway, left the door to the house open or the water on in the bathtub as we hurried to answer the phone. That’s understandable. We were just distracted. We forget to place a toddler into that story and replay the tape of what could have been. We don’t see the walls.
Nicole has a choice to make. It will require her courage and our support. She can decide that her time with Remy was all for nothing if it had to end in death and her now alone. Or she can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than she dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared her. So, like the rest of us, she just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day; didn’t consider the sacredness of it.
Now it’s over and she begins to see it wasn’t just a silly movie or birthday cake, chasing Remy while changing a diaper, cleaning up messes all over her little face or bath time together. It was everything. It was every precious moment of it. The mystery becomes the love they shared and how deep and intense it grew in such a short life together.
And when the loss awakens her to the deeper beauty of it, the sanctity of it, I hope she will be driven to her knees – not by the weight of the loss, but the gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness. Because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, would be to disrespect the gift of the life they shared.
Our community has a choice to make. That’s me and you. There is that reflex need to pass judgment and separate ourselves from this horror. But there is no condemnation nor punishment humankind can devise that will ever surpass that which Nicole has already applied to herself. How much is enough? Is there no hope of forgiveness? No redemption from hell?
There is a prescribed legal response. I hope those charged with considering those decisions will have discernment to distinguish between criminal activity and a tragedy in which further punishment accomplishes nothing . You can’t fix a broken thing by breaking another part of it. When does the law itself become inhumane? It is why human oversight is required in its application.
The road out of hell will require courage and support. The Evergreen family will stand by Nicole and her husband Peter. We will hold them tight in our prayers and do all in our power to encourage healing. We invite you to join us.
Tim Powell MD
President, EFM
After the post garnered more than 1,700 shares and 3,400 reactions, Powell posted one more clarification:
I have been stunned and humbled by the response of love and support for Nicole. From the bottom of my heart, I thank each of you. These further comments are probably unnecessary. Your compassion and willingness to be part of the healing are overwhelming.
There were a few responses that made me wonder if I could have been more clear. To those, I say this. I wasn’t asking your forgiveness for Nicole’s sake.
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. Our part is to be willing to forgive. Unless we can come to that point, we will never truly accept forgiveness for our own shortcomings. Because we understand the limitations. We have made them ourselves.
Actual forgiveness is a gift from God. It frees us from anger, bitterness, and shame. But the willingness to forgive is a choice. Making the decision to choose isn’t always easy. We sometimes take refuge in our own or other’s misery, a strange kind of comfort.
Mostly, I wanted you to understand about the walls. How fast this separation between life as you know it and your new reality can appear. Let me grant you this. You won’t make Nicole’s mistake. You will make your own. In forty years as a Family Physician, I have borne witness to the fire. You will make mistakes. A momentary lapse of focus near water, failure to place safety plugs in the outlet, leaving an electrical appliance on, pulling into a roadway in front of a vehicle you should have seen but somehow looked past, turning aside for just a moment with your baby on the table.
Almost always, no harm will follow. That is grace. It is quickly forgotten. But understand this. The consequences are not yours to choose. Knowing that is humbling. Being willing to forgive is what prepares us for that dark night of the soul. The night the walls come down.
With the loss of her baby, Nicole has lost her dreams. She has obtained her goals as a nurse and nurse practitioner. But like parents everywhere, she had dreams for Remy’s life. The natural order has been violated. And the pain won’t stop.
It is why I am making this plea to the District Attorney not to punish Nicole further. It serves no purpose. If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break. Surely, this is the time for healing.
Tim Powell MD
President, Evergreen Family Medicine
Police released no further details about the ongoing investigation.
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