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This is from the afternoon update on the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal.

Boy sucked from mother's arms; father, son missing
By WOODY BAIRD
Associated Press Writer
May 5, 2003

DENMARK, Tenn. - Rhonda McLaughlin was holding her 7-year-old son Lee in her arms when a tornado hit their home, ripping him away and even pulling a ring off her hand.

The tornado that swept through this small community about 12 miles southwest of Jackson on Sunday night left a swath of destruction that included downed trees, overturned cars and demolished homes.

The storm caused at least 13 deaths across the state, authorities said, including 10 in Jackson and Madison County. Lee McLaughlin was among the dead, while his grandfather, Larry Kiddy, was in intensive care.

Rescue workers also found a woman's body in a lake a mile away Monday afternoon but continued searching for a man and his son.

Anita Rhodes said her sister-in-law was holding onto Lee McLaughlin as tight as she could in their doublewide mobile home.

"She doesn't know how he got loose," Rhodes said.

Rhodes was helping her brother, Tom McLaughlin, search through the rubble of his home for his wife's ring on Monday. McLaughlin had been returning home from Nashville when the tornado hit.

"She never took it off but it wasn't on her hand this morning," Rhodes said of the ring.

Rhonda McLaughlin and her sons tried to ride out the storm, with her youngest child wrapped in her arms as her teenage son, T.J., held onto her. As the mobile home was torn apart, winds separated them.

After the tornado, T.J. McLaughlin pulled his mother out of the rubble, placed her inside a car and covered her with a blanket. He then found his grandfather in the debris of what had been his home and covered him with a tarp until help arrived.

"He's in intensive care, and my young son is dead," Tom McLaughlin said before breaking down.

Rescue workers found the body of a woman under debris in a five-acre lake, according to Trooper Roger Cathey. She had lived in a doublewide mobile home nearby with a man and his son. All that remained of the trailer was the concrete slab.

The man and the boy remained missing, so workers knocked a hole in a levee to drain the lake.

"It'll take a day or two for the lake to drain," said Ed Apple of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department's rescue team, searching with his yellow Labrador Gus.

That's such a heartbreaking story...to have her sun ripped out of her hands.

I'm praying for all of you.

They always tell you to get out of mobile homes during bad weather. HELL there is NO where for us Mobile Home owners to GO. We live in Millington..our mobile home is strapped down. BUT the city of Millington offers NO where for the residents of the 3 mobile home parks to go to.

When the tornado hit Germantown a few years ago it made kindling of $350,000+ homes brick homes with basements.

sad..so sad.