Daniel Gonnion always had more energy than could be contained.
He broke through three different plastic baby fences in his living room, running through them like they were football tackle sleds, before his parents switched to a wood one. And he broke through that, too.
He started climbing the playset in his backyard before he was two. At three, he weighed almost as much as his sister, Charlie, three years his senior. He loved to swim and run and play. His parents eventually resorted to putting his footie pajamas on backwards so that he couldn’t wriggle out of them in the middle of the night.
“There was no fear in that kid, whatsoever,” said his mother, Haylee Thibeau. “He never sat still.”
Daniel, despite his exuberance, was also slow to speech, leaning on his physical energy to communicate.
“He didn’t have much language yet,” said Emma Washburn, one of Daniel’s teachers at the early-education Woodside School. “But he was just so expressive, was just always so excited to do things.”
By February, that growing confidence was cut short.
On a cold winter morning with frozen snowbanks lining the street, police were called to the family’s duplex on Dakin Street. Daniel died as a result of what police determined was a tragic accident in his home. The loss left his family reeling and heartbroken.
“Every day you wake up and there’s a whole hole in your heart,” Haylee said.
David Gonnion was used to his young grandson bouncing around on his sturdy frame, or reaching up to pull his facial hair.
“The last time I saw him,” David remembered, “He was yelling ‘G-Pa! G-Pa! G-Pa!’ It was just like a switch. He didn’t say much for the longest time, and then all of a sudden he’d started coming out.”
Suddenly the child with all that energy was gone.
Building a family
Brandon Gonnion and Haylee Thibeau met when they were in their early twenties, both working at the Loudon Road Olive Garden. They didn’t really get along – until a group of coworkers was supposed to go out for karaoke one night at the Beijing and Tokyo restaurant.
Haylee was the only one who showed up. Just as she was about to leave, Brandon walked into the bar and convinced her to stay for a drink.
“She fell madly in love with me,” Brandon said.
“I was like, all right, he’s not terrible,” Haylee said.
Kara Smukler and Haylee have been friends since they were in grade school. Smukler said she knew her friend — who was always the one to say ‘get up off the couch’ or to plan something — would take to being a parent.
“She is just someone who will do everything in her means for other people,” Smukler said. “I knew, these kids are just so lucky to have her as a mom. Like, they’re not going to be tablet kids. They’re gonna be out adventuring.”
Charlie and Daniel were opposite in many ways, their parents described. Charlie is small for her age and easygoing. Daniel was big, a ball of energy who always had a bit of mischief up his sleeve. But they became close siblings.
When the family woke up on February 20, it felt like a normal Friday.
Brandon brought Charlie to school at Abbot-Downing, and Haylee would usually bring Daniel in later for his preschool program.
Within minutes of entering his yellow-walled room to wake him up, Haylee called 911. An operator talked her through CPR.
“I could tell when I walked into the room that he had not slept in the bed,” she said. “It was still all flipped over.”
After they tucked him in, Brandon and Haylee had heard Daniel scampering around his room. A floor vent connected it and the living room below, where they had lingered after getting both kids down for the night.
As she had before, Haylee said, she went over to the vent and called up to him through it.
“I said, Daniel, it’s time to go to bed,” Haylee said, “and I heard his little feet scurry across the other side of the room where his bed is.”
At some point in the night, Daniel became caught in the straps of a backpack hanging on the back of his door and suffocated.
By mid-morning the next day, the duplex on Dakin Street flooded with police, then extended family. According to a police report, investigators quickly clocked the situation as an accident. Walking through the home, officers catalogued the extensive baby-proofing.
“Anybody that knows them knows they’re the most loving, and did everything to protect him,” David Gonnion, Brandon’s father, said. “It’s just a tragic mistake.”
In the days after, their family escaped to an Airbnb in North Conway with Brandon’s parents and Haylee’s mother and sister.
They found a house with a bunk bed in it, queen on the bottom, twin on top, afraid to let Charlie sleep out of their sight.
Police told Brandon and Haylee that it was best not to look at social media or the news for a while.
“Of course she did. Of course I did,” said Terry Gonnion, Daniel’s grandmother. “One of the lessons I took out of this – not that I wanted a lesson – was, don’t be so quick to judge. When you see that article, without a lot of details, you don’t know.”
Forever changed
Finding a new normal was hard when so much was different.
“Charlie would come up to me and say ‘it’s so quiet in here,'” Haylee said.
When Brandon returned to his work in HVAC, he struggled going into homes that had children. He worked out an answer if he was ever asked how many children he had: “In my heart, two.”
Haylee and Daniel used to go to Market Basket on Mondays. He’d always get a cookie at the bakery counter.
“I can’t go to the same stores I used to,” she said.
Showing off her toys, including a monster truck plush that was Daniel’s, Charlie remembered when her little brother would sneak in to see her after bedtime.
“This was my brother’s favorite room,” she said. “I’d always say, ‘Daniel, you can stay here but you have to sleep’ – and he did not like to sleep.”
She now keeps a photo of him framed on the table by her bed.
Washburn, the teacher, said Daniel had a knack for sensing when another kid was down. Wordlessly, he’d come up and give a deep hug.
Sometimes, Daniel would be one of the last kids picked up from school, another teacher, Kassidy Card, remembered. She was glad, she said, because it was another few minutes to spend with him.
Haylee and Brandon found ways to lean on each other.
“When losing a child, it can either pull you together or can split you apart. And I think that both of us realized that there was no blame in any of this,” Haylee said. “Unfortunately, this is going to be something we have to suffer through for the rest of our lives, but at least we will have each other. Nobody else will understand it like he understands it for me, because he knows, and he was there, and he had the same kid.”
Smukler said she and Haylee consider each other’s children like their own. While Daniel’s loss is in some ways a cautionary tale, she said, what she hopes lives on the most is his joy for life. His blue eyes. His giggle.
“He should be talked about,” Smukler said. “His memory shouldn’t be dampened by what happened at all because that’s just not how he was.”
