For parents of Christmas parade dancers, the news brought panic, then relief, then sadness
Just an hour before, Hillsborough street roared with marching band music and hundreds of cheering holiday-minded spectators. Now, it was eerily quiet, save for the jingling of costumes that never debuted on the parade route and the blare of police walkie-talkies.
Vendors selling Christmas candles and knitwear slowly closed their tents. Spectators in Santa hats packed up folding chairs and blankets. Parents shepherded their children — dressed as elves, deer and pandas — back home.
Allison Sias was waiting on the sidelines during the parade, waiting for her daughter, 13, to pass when her mother called to say that a girl in a dance company had been injured by a truck.
Sias panicked — her daughter Ella was performing with the Stage door Studio, as she has for the last seven years. After several frantic calls, the company assured her that their students were safe.
A member of the CC & Company dance troupe was injured Saturday when the brakes went out on a truck pulling one of the troupe’s two floats.
Even though it wasn’t her daughter’s group, speaking about the incident brought Sias to tears.
“The thought that someone dropped their kid off” — she paused to wipe tears from her eyes — “I just can’t believe it happened in our community.”
Michael Johnson, whose daughter Cassidy was scheduled to perform with a dance company in the parade, had similar fears when he heard about the incident.
“Obviously, I was worried,” he said. “The girl was in a dance company and Cassidy was in a dance company.”
Ella Sias and Cassidy Johnson were among many performers who had not started walking in the parade when organizers canceled the event.
Andrew Holobay, who was set to walk in the parade with Ukrainians in the Carolinas, said he was particularly disturbed to find out that it was a child who was injured.
“That it happened to a child is horrible,” he said. “The whole parade is for children in the first place.”
