Mom of twins killed in Orion Twp. crash: I told them I loved them

Sy'Mone and Brianna Johnson

LaToya Mojet got her twin daughters, Brianna Marie Latrese Johnson and Sy'Mone Analyse Nicole Johnson, ready for school and drove them to a gas station just minutes way so they could be picked up by one of their friend's mothers and shuttled from Pontiac to Oxford High School.

But the weather was bad.

"I looked like, 'Hmm, I wonder if I should even send them to school today,'" Mojet said today.

In the car, she turned on an AM news station, hoping to hear whether Oxford High was closed. Nothing. She didn't want Brianna and Sy'Mone to miss school, so the twins piled into Barbara Felder's car, along with Felder's daughter Ashley.

On Joslyn Road, south of Clarkston Road, in Orion Township, Barbara Felder lost control of her car on the icy, snow-covered road, crossed into oncoming traffic and was broadsided by a pickup.

Ashley, Brianna and Sy'Mone died. They were all 14-year-old freshmen. A man, who identified himself as Ashley's father Monday, said Barbara Felder was being treated at Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital Regional Medical Center for a back fracture.

When Mojet spoke to Barbara Felder in the hospital after the accident, she told her she didn't blame her. Both, she said, sent their teens to Oxford High to get them a better education, but it meant shuttling them back and forth.

"We were parents trying to do anything we could to get our kids in a good school district," Mojet said. "We worked together to carpool and get them there every day and get them home."

Before heading out today to make funeral arrangements for Brianna and Sy'Mone, Mojet talked about her twins -- the oldest of her five daughters and, she said, a surprise from the beginning.

When she was pregnant with them, she went into preterm labor. Doctors did an ultrasound before performing an emergency Cesarean section. Surprise, they told a 15-year-old Mojet, there are two babies. First came Brianna at 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Then Sy'Mone, 2 pounds, 10 ounces.

Mojet said her twins were opposites, but inseparable.

Brianna was quiet and loving, hugged everybody and wanted to be an artist. Sy'Mone was lively, a social butterfly and cheerleader who wanted to be a fashion designer.

They were the ultimate partners, their mom said. They wouldn't tell on each other when one did something wrong. Mojet suspects some sort of twin pact. Mostly, though, they loved each other. She's not sure one could have survived without the other.

"They shared everything together," Mojet said. "God brought them in this world together and he took them out together."

After finding out that her daughters had died, Mojet asked to spend a few minutes alone with her daughters in a room at the hospital.

"I kissed them," she said, "and told them I loved them."

(Edit:Ruby)