Miriam James-Decker is still haunted by the call from her panicked 13-year-old daughter, crying and screaming into the phone from the side of a Manitoba highway after a crash that left two men dead.

One of the men was Miriam’s ex-husband, Samuel James-Decker, who had the couple’s three children during a visitation.

“I’m just still completely in shock and complete disbelief and confusion over what happened, and just heartbroken over the pain and trauma that my kids now have to carry,” said Miriam on Tuesday evening.

Five days earlier, on March 6, she received a heart-wrenching call from an unknown number around 7:30 p.m. and was staggered by her daughter’s distressed voice.

“She was crying and screaming on the phone, saying that they had just gotten hit by a car and their dad had been outside of the car trying to get the car unstuck, and suddenly a car came along and hit them and now he was on the ground unconscious,” Miriam said.

“She was screaming ‘I don’t know what to do.’”

Samuel was driving with the three kids he shared with Miriam — the 13-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy — when their car slid off Highway 428 into the snowy ditch about 10 kilometres north of Winkler.

She was screaming ‘I don’t know what to do.’– Miriam James-Decker

Samuel lived in Winkler and Miriam in Winnipeg, where she moved after the separation in 2021.

According to RCMP, two men had stopped their trucks on the edge of the highway to help Samuel try to get his car back on the road.

A 17-year-old girl driving toward them didn’t realize the trucks were stopped. She swerved to miss one but clipped the other. Her vehicle then swerved off the highway and into the back of Samuel’s car in the ditch.

Samuel, 44, and a 73-year-old from one of the trucks were struck and died.

The teen driver and a 17-year-old female passenger were not seriously injured. Samuel and Miriam’s kids were still inside the car, which was hit hard enough that its rear window shattered.

They were jolted pretty hard but mostly unharmed — at least physically.

Psychologically, though, “it’s hard to say,” said Miriam.

“The emotions go back and forth between acting normal, even acting happy,  and then sadness. It’s the pendulum.”

After the call from her daughter at the scene, Miriam reached out to relatives in Winkler to get the kids. She didn’t know then that Samuel had died.

She found out when the relative arrived at the scene and called her back.

“It’s very awful knowing that my children saw their father [lying there],” Miriam said.

Telling her kids that Samuel died “was probably one of the most horrendous moments of my life,” she said.

The next worst was calling Samuel’s family.

He originally came to Manitoba as a refugee from Sierra Leone and later become a Canadian citizen. Most of his family still lives in West Africa.

“So I had to make the call to them that their son and their brother was gone. It’s horrible for them to be coping with that, just being over there and feeling so helpless,” Miriam said.

Fun loving and generous

She and Samuel had been together since 2005 and were married in 2011. The union didn’t work out but Miriam said she has many fond memories and the couple’s co-parenting arrangement worked well.

She described Samuel as a fun-loving and generous person with many friends and a special way with kids and animals. In Winkler, he was a direct support worker in a group home for people with developmental disabilities.

“He had a really good way with these people and he was loved by them,” Miriam said.

Samuel also helped non-profit organizations send items to a Sierra Leone orphanage.

“Even though he’d only gotten the chance once to go back there, he would always talk about how badly he wanted to help make Sierra Leone a better country,” Miriam said.

“If anything, I would say that was his major mission in life.”

She hasn’t been able to plan a funeral service yet because Samuel’s body is set to undergo an autopsy and hasn’t been released yet. For now, Miriam is focused on the kids, and helping them cope.

“I always recognized how much he meant to the children and how much they meant to him, and the very special kind of love and relationship he had with each child that is now going to be missing from their lives. “

She has looked into grief and trauma counseling resources though the school division and Manitoba Public Insurance.

“In the meantime, [I’m] just trying to keep the kids occupied and a little bit distracted, to do activities with them and outings; just so they feel like they’re still allowed to be happy and not expected to just sit there and look sad — that all kinds of feelings are OK and appropriate.”

And she thinks often of the 73-year-old man who died alongside Samuel. Miriam doesn’t know his name but acknowledges he’ll forever be tied to the family.

“They died trying to help [Samuel] and my kids. I’ll never forget that.”