Twice a week, Ellie Tourney eats lunch on a stone bench near her son’s grave.
She doesn’t want her youngest boy to feel like he has been forgotten.
Nearly a year has passed since Jonathan Tourney and Taylor Orlowski were killed on Christmas weekend when the speeding SUV they were in with four other teens crashed on a dark road in Allegheny County’s North Park.
Jonathan, 14, a Pine-Richland High School freshman, chased adrenaline. He whizzed around the football gridiron as a wide receiver — and was bulking up in hopes of leading his team one day as quarterback.
Taylor was 18, a nationally ranked equestrian from Beaver County. Her very life revolved around the two horses she trained with at an elite North Hills stable. Her future looked unimaginably bright.
Little feels settled for Jonathan’s and Taylor’s families, particularly two mothers overwhelmed by the profound push and pull between mourning and moving on.
A trial is scheduled to start Monday against Aiden Saber, the 18-year-old driver charged in the teens’ deaths on Dec. 23.
Ellie Tourney, 54, of Richland still talks and writes to Jonathan at his gravesite, still mothering the son whose death consumes her.
“I just want to let him know we didn’t leave him,” she said, “that he’s not alone.”
‘I love you, kid’
Taylor’s beige lockers resemble a crypt at Houdini Farms, the Butler County stable where she housed and rode her two horses.
Shortly after the crash, Heather McCandless, Taylor’s mom, removed saddles from Taylor’s lockers. The remaining contents have not been touched. Taylor’s black riding boots sit on the locker floor. A message written in purple marker remains scrawled on the inside of one of her lockers, like it could have been written yesterday.
“Hi, Tay. Even tho I rarely say it, I love you. Forever and always.”
Taylor’s life centered around her horses.
Tom, a reddish-brown Westphalian, was all business. Taylor connected on a different level with Lydell, a white Belgian Warmblood. The gentle giant hovered above Taylor’s 5-foot-tall frame. Lydell often rested his head on Taylor’s shoulder as she rubbed him or caressed his mane.
Jonathan first met Taylor only hours before they died together.
Taylor knew some of Jonathan’s friends, many current and former Pine-Richland students, through acquaintances. The two of them hung out for about two hours at a Sheetz convenience store parking lot in Pine.
With Jonathan came his older brother Jeffrey; Jeffrey’s best friend, Aiden; and Matthew Nicely. Matthew’s younger brother, Zach, tagged along.
Jeffrey testified in court this spring about what led to the crash.
About 12:45 a.m. Dec. 23, the group retreated to the Tourney house. There, Jeffrey said, three of the teens drank peach-flavored Busch Light beer in the attached garage.
Aiden had two beers, Jeffrey testified.
The group piled into Aiden’s mother’s Land Rover and drove to nearby North Park, where they hiked a trail rumored to be haunted.
Next came Irwin Road.
No street lights illuminate the narrow, tree-shaded back road, a half-mile stretch of asphalt that’s book-ended with signs warning unauthorized visitors to keep out.
Shortly after 3 a.m., Jeffrey testified that he was sitting in the front passenger seat as Aiden gunned the gas pedal, roaring the vehicle down the darkened road.
“Slow down. Slow down!” Jeffrey said he pleaded.
“I got it,” Aiden replied.
About 30 seconds later, police said, Aiden lost control of the SUV, smashing its passenger side into an oak tree. The SUV cleaved in half, so mangled that first responders weren’t sure if the crash involved one car or two.
It tumbled forward, coming to rest more than 400 feet, about 1½ football fields, from where it hit the tree.
Jeffrey doesn’t remember the moment of impact — or how he got out of the vehicle. One of his shoes was inside the car. Another was on the roadway.
Four of the teens were injured, still inside the SUV. But the tremendous impact shot Jonathan and Taylor from the vehicle.
Taylor, whose vivacity burst from her pint-sized frame, lay lifeless on a hillside.
Jeffrey found Jonathan, still breathing, and cradled his dying brother in his arms.
Featured Local Businesses
Everything is going to be OK, he told him.
First responders arrived. A medical helicopter hurried Jonathan to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
He died on the way.
No winners
No amount of alcohol is legal in Pennsylvania for drivers under age 21. Aiden’s blood-alcohol content that night registered 0.047%. For drivers over 21, the legal limit is 0.08%.
Detectives said tire marks showed the Land Rover might have hit 72 mph before the crash, nearly three times the 25 mph speed limit on Irwin Road.
Three months after the crash, police took Aiden to the Allegheny County Jail. He has not left.
Authorities opted not to charge him with homicide by vehicle while DUI. Instead, they filed the less severe charge of homicide by vehicle, which carries no minimum penalty and caps a prison sentence at five years. They also charged him with involuntary manslaughter, DUI and other offenses.
Some friends of Jonathan’s and Taylor’s families worry that if Aiden is convicted, a judge could sentence him to as little as one year in prison. In that instance, with time served, Aiden could be out of jail by spring.
The Tourney and Orlowski families declined to speak on the record about the trial, sentencing guidelines or terms of a potential plea deal.
Craig Frischman, who represents Taylor’s family, also wouldn’t discuss specifics.
“We have the utmost confidence and respect in the criminal justice system and the courts,” Frischman said. “Ultimately, it’s the court’s decision from here.”
Attorney Casey White, who represents Aiden, did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment. Neither did Aiden’s parents nor the Nicelys, whose two sons were injured in the crash.
“There’s no victories,” White said after Aiden’s preliminary hearing in the spring. “This is another sad chapter in a sad, tragic story.”
Jonathan’s mother echoed that sadness when talking about the pending trial.
“There’s going to be no winners, that’s for sure, no winners on either side,” Ellie said. “Hopefully, (Aiden) can find himself and become something because my son will never be able to do that.”
‘I’m blessed that I had those 14 years with him’
Ellie’s neighbor, who watched the Tourney boys grow up, said it was too painful to read the lyrics to the Rod Stewart song “Forever Young” at Jonathan’s funeral. Instead, he sang them.
The phrase hung in the air throughout 2024.
In March, Jeffrey stood next to Aiden in a cramped Downtown Pittsburgh courtroom and testified that his former best friend’s recklessness led to the crash that killed his brother and Taylor.
Ellie choked back tears as she sat nearby, her shirt adorned with a forest-green ribbon — the color of the uniform Jonathan wore when playing high school football.
“Forever young,” the ribbon read.
The phrase is carved into an ornate banner on the cemetery bench where Ellie sits to eat lunch with Jonathan. It adorns a sticker on the back of Jeffrey’s red Dodge Ram.
The phrase was scribbled in green ink on the giant, circular sheet of paper that Pine-Richland Rams football players ran through to kick off their first home game without Jonathan.
Ellie even tattooed the phrase on her left arm.
For her and others struck by Jonathan’s and Taylor’s deaths, much of 2024 buckled under the weight of grief.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Ellie wrote to Jonathan in a brown leather journal. She later tucked the journal into Jonathan’s casket, along with some photos, before he was buried.
For months, she has kept writing Jonathan notes while sitting at his grave.
“Everything you can possibly think of as a mother, I put that in,” she said. “I apologize to him, like, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you.’ I also let him know I’m so proud of him. And I’m blessed that I had those 14 years with him.”
For Taylor’s mother, Heather, it’s butterflies.
Taylor’s grandfather died while she was in diapers. Growing up, when Taylor saw a butterfly, she thought of him.
In May, a butterfly landed on Heather’s hand at a Mothers Against Drunk Driving event held in North Park. It stayed there for nearly 90 seconds.
“It felt like that was Taylor sitting there with me,” Heather said.
Growing up fast
Featured Local Businesses
Ellie knows tragedy. She buried her husband and son about six months apart.
Doctors diagnosed David Tourney with an aggressive brain cancer in January 2023. They gave him a year to live. He lasted six months, dying in June at age 62.
Jonathan followed in December.
“As awful as it was to lose a spouse, she had her boys,” said Ellie’s friend Jen Stout, 44, of Richland. “She’d say, ‘I’m going to show them, when life knocks you down, this is how you respond.’ And she’d always do it with a smile.”
Jonathan’s death was more debilitating, friends said.
As she nears the crash’s first anniversary, Ellie proudly talks about visiting North Park — even “the scary part” where the crash happened. But her days sometimes are riddled with meltdowns.
Jeffrey, reserved like his father, doesn’t talk much about Dec. 23.
These days, he has a job tending to heating and ventilation systems at UPMC Passavant in McCandless. The hospital’s entrance sits blocks away from Jonathan’s grave.
“I have a lot of hours of work,” Jeffrey said when asked about the crash’s aftermath. “I’m just trying to stay as busy as I can, as much as possible.”
After losing his brother and father, Jeffrey, now 19, had to grow up fast.
Since the wreck, he doesn’t drive after midnight. He keeps most feelings about the crash to himself.
“The only thing he’s ever said to me was, ‘Mom, if it was me driving that night, that would have never happened,’ ” said Ellie, crying.
Matt McCandless sometimes slips and speaks about Taylor, his late niece, in the present tense.
“She is and always will be part of me,” said Heather’s younger brother, a 44-year-old tech worker who lives in Beaver County. “I still talk to her all the time.”
In August, during a picture-perfect summer afternoon in a Beaver County park, Matt manned the ticket table during a celebration of Taylor.
High school-aged friends lined up for helpings of barbecue. Volunteers bustled around in T-shirts bearing Taylor’s name in purple ink.
Auctions that day for dozens of baskets, combined with a GoFundMe campaign for the family, raised $30,000 to fund a U.S. Equestrian Federation grant in Taylor’s memory, Heather said.
Some from Orlowski’s family and Houdini Farms are talking about driving to Kentucky next year to hand a young horse-rider the proverbial oversized check.
Matt hopes Heather feels nurtured by the fundraising she does to help young equestrians. He also has seen how that immense grief — as well as the desire to push against it, to build something bigger to honor Taylor — weighs on his sister.
“I think the last six months have been sad and we’ve had to step up to help Heather,” he said. “But this is family, and I’ll do anything I have to.”
Taylor tattoos
The light sometimes shines, even if only briefly.
In April, Ellie and Jeffrey vacationed for a week in sun-splashed Aruba.
Ellie has trekked four times this year to Myrtle Beach, S.C. She and Jonathan had taken a mother-and-son trip there in August after David died. Ellie takes comfort in South Carolina in small details — listening to crashing waves or writing messages to Jonathan on seashells.
Sometimes, she throws the shells into the Atlantic Ocean. Other times, she buries them in the sand.
“I feel like, when I’m down at the beach, I have him in my head,” she said of Jonathan. “I know he’s there.”
The Tourneys have tried to transform dates or holidays that haunt them.
On the Sunday in May when Jonathan would have turned 15, his mother and brother sang “Happy Birthday” to him at his graveside. Seven days later, Jeffrey celebrated Mother’s Day by adopting a calico cat for his mother to love.
Taylor’s family also has worked to take back ownership of the calendar.
On Feb. 16, what would have been Taylor’s 19th birthday, family and friends celebrated her by releasing lanterns. A friend baked a birthday cake complete with angel wings and an infinity emblem. Weeks later, an artist tattooed the emblem, interwoven with Taylor’s name, near Heather’s left shoulder.
In spring, Heather planted a flower garden in her front yard. She included Taylor’s favorites — hibiscuses and pansies in vibrant shades of pink and purple.
The garden inspired a new set of tattoos — flowers in eye-popping pink, the symbolic butterfly and Taylor’s horse Lydell — that sleeve half of Heather’s right arm.
Featured Local Businesses
Donnie Orlowski, Taylor’s father, paid tribute in ink to his daughter more than a decade ago, tattooing Taylor’s name across his forearm. This autumn, he tattooed her full name across his chest.
Donnie isn’t ready to talk about life without Taylor. But last spring, he wanted to speak during a bail hearing for Aiden Saber.
Instead, he wept as Taylor’s mother read aloud his statement. In it, Donnie talked about how he ends each day by saying “good night” to the urn holding his late daughter’s ashes.
Two journals, a bag of notes
After school on Friday, Dec. 22, 2023, hours before his death, Jonathan dropped his black backpack in the corner of the kitchen — part of his daily routine.
Ellie hasn’t moved the backpack. Instead, she cleans around it.
After Taylor returned home from horse-riding shortly before the crash, she placed her barn-muddied sneakers in front of the door to her second-floor bedroom.
Heather refuses to move them.
Some things, though, do change.
Though Ellie initially was racked with guilt over doing something only for herself, she’s embraced a return to running.
The former marathoner now jogs 4 or 5 miles every other day. Sometimes, she runs at the park where the crash occurred.
Ellie used her passion for running to raise money in Jonathan’s memory. Last January, she toyed with starting a nonprofit to support her late son’s teammates. On Sept. 15, Jonathan’s Forever Young Team staged its inaugural event, a 5K run, in North Park.
More than 600 people registered. Nearly 350 ran or walked.
Ellie did not. Instead, she stood near the finish line, cheering on those who participated.
Due largely to the 5K run, Ellie’s group has netted about $30,000. That money will fund scholarships for some of Jonathan’s football teammates and be used to purchase equipment like padded concussion helmets.
Ellie has committed to helping the high school squad through 2026. That covers what would have been Jonathan’s sophomore, junior and senior years.
Therapy has served as a tremendous salve.
Heather regularly sees a grief therapist through the Center for Victims, a South Side-based organization whose staffers respond to the emergency needs of crime victims and witnesses.
Ellie visits a psychologist two or three times a month. She also sees a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder weekly.
“I can scream. I can cry,” Ellie said. “They help me through it. And it teaches me a lot of ways to heal.”
Therapists have encouraged both mothers to keep journals.
Heather has two: one in which she speaks to Taylor and another “for bad days,” when emotions roil.
Ellie still writes to Jonathan, these days in little notes she pens during their semi-weekly lunches. She stores them in a plastic bag that rests on the side of her cemetery bench.
“It just brings me a lot of comfort, knowing he can hear me,” she said.
‘He should be out there’
For Ellie, the blur of growth and grief since Jonathan’s death is encapsulated in a single football game.
She and Jeffrey stood in the stadium bleachers at Pine-Richland High School in late August. Surrounded by friends, Ellie planned to watch the team hold its home opener.
As the bandstand filled, an army of horn players and drummers hammered out fight songs. Cheerleaders jumped and twirled. Football players pumped their fists.
Then an announcer spoke. Ellie wasn’t expecting it.
“Jonathan Tourney would have been a sophomore on this year’s team,” the announcer’s voice boomed during a minute-long monologue delivered to a silent crowd. “He loved his football brothers, and they loved him.”
The Pine-Richland Rams, he said, will wear helmet decals with the initials J.T. and Jonathan’s uniform number, 14. The crowd then sat quietly for 14 seconds of silence.
On the field, two players — friends of Jonathan’s — draped a forest-green No. 14 jersey between them like a flag.
“Thank you, and God bless the memory of Jonathan Tourney,” the announcer said.
Ellie, sporting a jersey with the name Tourney on the back, fell apart.
She couldn’t stop crying.
At one point, Ellie bent forward, heaving, as she struggled to pull herself together. Some friends stood by her side and helped hold her up.
Pine-Richland won that night, defeating Central Catholic, 22-17.
Ellie didn’t make it to kickoff. She and Jeffrey drove home.
“I just couldn’t hold it together,” she said later. “I just kept looking around, thinking, ‘He should be out there. Jonathan should be out there. He should be out there wearing that jersey.’ ”