Finding words at last for an unspeakable loss

Finding words at last for an unspeakable loss
Eleven months have passed since Danielle and Ken Lambert's 5-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son were carried to their deaths into oncoming traffic on Interstate 495 in Lowell by Danielle's identical twin in a nearly unfathomable tragedy. But in the Lamberts's grief, they are trying to use the information they have begun gathering to prevent the unthinkable from happening to someone else. (By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff)

BRENTWOOD, N.H. - The refrigerator is still covered with red, yellow, and blue magnetic letters and numbers. A Play-Doh set rests atop a wooden kitchen cabinet, as if tiny fingers will play with it soon. Living room shelves are stacked neatly with Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Barbie dolls, and toy cars.

Eleven months have passed since Danielle and Ken Lambert's 5-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son were carried to their deaths into oncoming traffic on Interstate 495 in Lowell by Danielle's identical twin in a nearly unfathomable tragedy. Yet their belongings still fill their house in this rural town in southeastern New Hampshire.

"I just don't feel like I want to move it," said Danielle Lambert, in a recent interview. "I kind of like keeping things as they were. It sort of gives us a feeling of their presence." Lambert lost not only her only children, but her sister, Marcelle Thibault, on Jan. 11.

The Lamberts's anguish remains raw from that chilly Friday night when Thibault picked up their children to drive to a sleepover with cousins at her house in Bellingham. Along the way, Thibault crossed the median of I-495, stopped her car in the wrong direction, undressed herself and the two children, and then ran them to their deaths. According to one eyewitness, she was screaming about religion before she was hit.

But in the Lamberts's grief, they are searching for whatever clarity they can find and trying to use the information they have begun gathering to prevent the unthinkable from happening to someone else.

The State Police, the Lamberts have discovered, came heartbreakingly close to detaining Thibault for a psychiatric evaluation when they found her behaving erratically hours earlier that night on the median strip of the very same highway.

But the three troopers decided against it, and Thibault continued on her way to New Hampshire to pick up her niece and nephew.

Now, the State Police are one of two entities that the Lamberts said share blame for their children's deaths, the other being the renowned McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric facility in Belmont. The family believes that the hospital released Thibault far too early, and without any warnings about the risk she might pose to herself or others.

click link above for more