Teacher and mother Ladonna Cobb and her husband Steve Cobb were photographed walking with two children outside Briarwood Elementary School, after the EF-5 twister struck Oklahoma on Monday. Ledonna appears with a swollen eye and her face and neck are covered in blood, as she walks from the school were she is a teacher.
Ladonna Cobb was inside her classroom when the tornado struck.
“I was just grabbing onto whatever I could,” she told ABC News. “Once the roof came off the building I felt myself being sucked and I knew if I was taken, all the babies underneath me would be gone too.”
“So I just held on,” she said. “I held on for dear life until the wall fell on top of me and knocked me out.”
Ladonna suffered bruises on her face, but in general she is ok. In the photo, her husband Steve walks ahead of her, holding their daughter Jordan in his arms. Ledonna is also walking and holds a crying girl’s hand.
“I couldn’t leave the other kids,” she said. “They’re all are special to me. I wanted my family to be safe, but I also wanted everybody else’s family to be safe too.”
Ledonna’s full name is LaDonna Graham Cobb, she studied at Kingsburg High and graduated in 1993.
Her husband Steve said the scene outside the school was like a horror film.
“I wish I could have split myself into two to try help out some of the other kids because I can imagine how they were feeling at that time, when their parents weren’t there and they were kind of wandering around,” he said.
Briarwood was one of two schools hammered by the twister but miraculously no one was killed. However, the nearby Plaza Towers Elementary School didn’t have the same luck, seven children were killed.
The National Weather Service said the 1.3-mile-wide twister spent around 40 minutes on the ground, with winds as of 210-mph leaving 17 miles of destruction through the Oklahoma City suburb. On Wednesday, the death toll was at 24, including 9 children. More than 240 were injured.
Find LaDonna’s profile on Facebook here.
