Someday, a little girl named Linnea Olson will peer into the contents of a trunk filled with her mother’s favorite belongings - New Orleans Saints jerseys, a collection of scarves and various knickknacks collected during a life that lasted only 31 years.
Linnea also will find her own tiny baby clothes nestled among her mother’s things. And her father will tell her, “That’s how big you were when we lost your mommy.”
If Linnea wants to know what her mother looked like,she will need only to look into a mirror. There, she will see a winsome grin that crinkles the corners of a pair of blue eyes.
Linnea’s daddy, Eric Olson, will tell her stories about Mommy - how she was pregnant with Linnea at the same time as the wife of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and how she loved sushi almost as much as she loved talking on the phone.
At some point, Eric will have to tell Linnea how her mother died. He dreads the inevitable questions.
Then, Linnea will learn that she was there when it happened - strapped into an infant carrier in the back seat of her mother’s Mazda - when bullets fired from a passing truck killed Samantha Olson.
They had plans, Eric and Samantha.
Married only since November 2012, the couple were elated to begin a new stage in their lives.
In late August, Samantha, an accountant, would begin classes to become a certified public accountant. The couple would put their small North Little Rock home on the market and buy a house big enough to accommodate their growing family, which included not only baby Linnea but also an 80-pound German shepherd, two rescue dogs and two cats.
They would have a second child, and maybe one day relocate to the Pacific Northwest.
But on Aug. 14, a couple of seemingly random gunshots at one of North Little Rock’s busiest intersections - where JFK Boulevard crosses McCain Boulevard - left Eric a single father who still expects to see his wife walk through the door each day.
“The toughest thing is completely accepting the reality of it,” Eric said. “I live it every day, but then there are these moments of like, man, she’s not coming back. Sometimes I think I’ll be 90, sitting on a porch and thinking she’s going to come down the driveway at any moment.”
Once, the couple’s life was a nearly finished puzzle, with each piece falling easily into place, he said. Now that puzzle has been taken apart, and a piece is missing.
“I have to put it together again, but it looks different now,” he explained.
Eric returned to his job at Copper Grill last week. Some questioned whether he was ready.
“I have a kid to take care of,” he said simply. “I have the best reason to get up, get out of bed every morning and keep on living, too. I can’t just lay down and go, ‘Woe is me, life is over.’ I’ve got to be a good, strong person and create that environment for my child. Whatever is best for her will be best for me.”
THE SHOOTING
On the evening of Aug. 14,Eric was at work when Samantha called from home.
They chatted for a moment, and then Samantha started laughing.
“Linnea just came in here with two fists of toilet paper,” Eric recalled her saying. “I’d better go see what the bathroom looks like. I love you.”
Sometime about 7:15 p.m., Samantha was in the car with the baby, heading east on McCain Boulevard.
Maybe she was running to get diapers, baby food, some other much-needed item.
Eric doesn’t know.
But as Samantha approached the intersection, a gunman in a pickup driving west on McCain opened fire. Police said three to six shots were fired into the young mother’s car. They declined to say how many times Samantha was hit or what kind of injuries she suffered.
Samantha’s Mazda came to a stop beside the Starbucks on McCain. The pickup continued west on McCain then turned left onto Camp Robinson Road. Video collected from businesses along the way showed that the truck was a maroon Ford F-150 built sometime between 2004 and 2008.
When police arrived at Samantha’s car, officers noted that the driver’s-side window was open about 6 inches and that the glass was intact. Linnea, who was strapped in an infant carrier in the back seat’s passenger side, appeared unscathed.
Meanwhile, at Copper Grill, one of Eric’s co-workers mentioned a shooting in North Little Rock near the McCain and JFK intersection.
“Your neighborhood’s getting rough,” he told Eric. Eric thought nothing of it. His phone rang soon after. The first time, Eric ignored it. When it rang again, however, he answered.
It was his father-in-law, Stan Doucet.
Stan’s rush of words made no sense to Eric. Something about Samantha and the hospital.
Eric left immediately for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center. On the way, he tried to call Samantha, but she didn’t answer. He prayed that everything was OK - that whatever had happened wasn’t serious.
But when Eric met Stan at the hospital, he was asked immediately by the staff for permission to treat his wife. Then a doctor came by, telling Eric that, “We have to wait for the chaplain.”
Eric realized that whatever had happened, it wasn’t good.
Finally, the doctor explained. “Samantha was shot,” she said. “She didn’t make it.”
Eric couldn’t grasp the doctor’s words. Surely they had the wrong person.
A series of jumbled thoughts flew through his mind: I’m never going to see her again. I’m never going to talk to her again. How am I going to take care of my kid?
Next to him, Stan began sobbing. Eric sank to the floor.
“The baby was unharmed and is at Children’s [Hospital],” the doctor continued.
A FAMILY GRIEVES
Samantha’s mother, Phyllis Vontungelin, got the call about 10:30 p.m.
“Samantha’s dead,” her ex-husband said.
Phyllis had taken the phone outside so that she wouldn’t wake up her sleeping granddaughter. At first, she argued with Stan. It just couldn’t be. When she started screaming and crying, neighbors rushed from their homes, carried Phyllis back into the house and helped her make the calls that had to be made.
It was about 3 a.m. when Samantha’s childhood best friend, Aimee Crow, heard the news.
Samantha and Aimee had grown up in the same Pine Bluff neighborhood and attended school together. They even called each other’s mothers, “Mama.”
Aimee remembered the sleepovers, the countless times she and Samantha had been grounded as teenagers, all the years of history and laughter. She cried for Samantha, Linnea, Phyllis, herself.
“She had such a beautiful laugh,” Aimee recalled. “It was a real laugh, the kind that comes from deep down, from your heart.”
Phyllis was nearly incapacitated by her grief. She had leaned on kind and dependable Samantha for so many years.
“She was our rock,” Phyllis explained through tears.
Samantha was the first person from either side of the family to earn a college degree. When Phyllis went through cancer treatment, Samantha drove from Little Rock to Pine Bluff for each chemotherapy session. When Phyllis had questions about insurance or medical bills, Samantha would do some research and give her mother advice.
Samantha called her mother every morning on her way to work.
“She was truly happy,” Phyllis said of her daughter’s last days. “You could see it in her smile and in her eyes. She had reached her happy.”
A LOVE STORY
The Little Rock restaurant community is closely knit, especially the wait-staff at Copper Grill and Cajun’s Wharf, both owned by Mary Beth Ringgold.
Eric worked primarily at Copper Grill, but during the summers, he also tended bar at Cajun’s. Six years ago, when Eric showed up at Cajun’s for his first shift, he met Samantha. It was her first day, too.
He thought she was cute. But at that time, Eric had a girlfriend.
“For a few years, we saw each other only during deck season,” he recalled, referring to the summer nights spent on the deck at Cajun’s.
Eric’s girlfriend broke up with him. He still thought Samantha was pretty. And he had learned that she was smart and funny and kind. But Eric was too shy to let her know he was interested in her.
Three years after they first met, Samantha left Cajun’s for Copper Grill.
“We started seeing each other all the time,” Eric said. “We had a friendly relationship, and it grew stronger. We realized we had a mutual attraction. It was storybook like, really. We started dating and seeing each other outside of work. We felt like we were a perfect match. After about a month of dating, we were at the mall, and she said she felt like we had been together for years. I felt the same way.”
The couple traveled a lot. During a trip to New Orleans, Eric managed to snag a couple of tickets to a Saints game. The seats were in the 10th row. Samantha was elated. “I’m going to marry you!” she shrieked.
“Really, from that point, we just realized how great we were together,” Eric said. “We knew we were going to get married even before I proposed.”
He asked her in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“It was going to be a lot cooler,” Eric said of the scenic backdrop he’d chosen for his marriage proposal. “But that year, they were doing renovations to the reflecting pool.So it was just a long pit of dirt and concrete.”
The couple began planning their wedding. Then Samantha learned she was pregnant. She called Eric, telling him that the Saints’ quarterback and his wife were expecting a baby.
“And I’m pregnant, too,” she added excitedly.
Eric was thrilled but nervous. Samantha had suffered several miscarriages. They’d lost a baby early on. But once Samantha reached 20 weeks, Eric allowed himself a sigh of relief. He wanted to be a dad. But he also was happy that his fiancee would finally realize her dream of becoming a mother.
Phyllis and Aimee also had been wary during the early months of Samantha’s pregnancy. They so wanted to share Samantha’s excitement. But they knew what a toll the miscarriages had taken on her.
On Sept. 16, 2012, Samantha gave birth to Linnea - pronounced Le-NAY-uh - who weighed a healthy 8½ pounds.
“It was pure joy,” Eric said. “Samantha was completely overcome with joy for that child. And I’m standing to the side, thinking, ‘This is magical. This is really amazing. This finally happened for her.’”
Eric, raised by a single mother, was relieved that his child would grow up with two parents. His own dad didn’t have anything to do with him. Eric vowed to be the kind of father he’d always wanted.
A few months later, on Nov. 11, 2012, Eric and Samantha married. Life was busy but good.
Samantha loved being a mother. And she proved to be a natural. Eric wasn’t surprised. He’d seen Samantha with her niece. “She just had this nurturing and motherly way about her,” he explained.
Samantha had stopped working for Copper Grill a week before she had Linnea. During her maternity leave, she found a new job as an accountant for a company that manufactures equipment for cable and satellite television.
“She really enjoyed her work,” Eric said, explaining that this was a second career for Samantha.
Samantha had first worked as a registered nurse. But she didn’t feel like nursing was her calling. She loved numbers. She loved putting things in order. When she and Eric became engaged, Samantha was finishing up an accounting degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
So when Samantha went back to work after Linnea’s birth, it was as an accountant.
The couple fell easily into a routine. Eric worked nights and cared for the baby during the day. Sundays were for family time. And if the couple ever needed a baby sitter, Eric’s mom and Samantha’s parents were willing volunteers.
Samantha and Eric began dreaming big - a new house, a second baby, a move to the Pacific Northwest.
And then someone with a gun fired a few shots out of a pickup, shattering those dreams.
NOT ENOUGH TIME
The first night without Samantha terrified Eric.
How would he get the baby to sleep? He didn’t think he could take it if his little girl cried for a mommy who would never again be able to comfort her. The grief he held at bay would overwhelm him if Linnea cried. Eric knew that if that happened, he would sob right along with her.
In the past, Samantha had always nursed Linnea to sleep. She’d take the baby to the master bedroom, lie down on the bed and Linnea would drowse, eventually drifting into slumber at her mother’s breast.
Armed with only a bottle, Eric managed to walk the baby to sleep that first night. He did it again the second night. And the third.
With that concern addressed, Eric moved on to other worries. He set up an appointment with the pediatrician and bombarded him with questions.
Would Linnea be affected by the fact that breast milk was no longer available? Eric’s biology degree made him aware of the advantages of nursing. Linnea didn’t like formula. When could he start giving her whole milk? At what age could she eat regular table food?
The pediatrician offered calming words. And as the days passed, Eric began feeling more confident making decisions alone.
But he misses his wife, their love and their friendship. He remembers the nights that he and Samantha stared in awe at their baby, when Samantha asked, “Is it because we’re her parents that we think she’s so beautiful?”
“No,” Eric told his wife. “She is beautiful.”
“It’s a unique experience in that our relationship ended not because we had issues and got divorced,” Eric said. “We were still very much in love and had a great relationship.”
Eric is grieving deeply. But he’s also angry. Why has no one come forward with information about the shooting? When will there be an arrest? What kind of person fires a gun at a car with a mother and a baby in it?
“She was an innocent,” he said of his wife. “She was a nursing mother with a baby in the back seat. What infuriates me is that as much as she wanted to be a mom, she didn’t even get a full year of it. This one person who, for so long, wanted to be a mom - finally, it happens - and she’s a great mother.
“But then Linnea’s mother is snatched from her, and Samantha is snatched from motherhood. That’s a very cold, cruel, unfair thing.”
Stan feels the same, constant burn of anger.
“We can tell Linnea all about Samantha, but it’s not going to be the same thing,” he said as he rocked his granddaughter to sleep. “Samantha so wanted to be a mother. I wish it could have been longer, but I’m so glad she got to be a mother.”
Before her death, Samantha had already started asking her dad what he wanted for Christmas.
“You already gave me my Christmas present,” Stan recalled telling her. “This little girl, right here.”
He gazed down at Linnea. Her blue eyes - so very like her mother’s - were shuttered in sleep.
And Stan remembered another little girl with dark hair and blue eyes. A little girl he took fishing and camping, a little girl who once slumbered just as deeply in his arms.
Anyone with information about this unsolved case can call (501) 680-8439, a 24-hour tip-line answered by detectives, or offer anonymous information by texting 274637 (CRIMES) and use the keyword NLR. There is a reward of $11,000 for information leading to an arrest.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/29/2013