AUSTELL, Ga. — Two years ago, Ryan Nickerson's world - and the world of a 10-year-old girl's family - altered suddenly and dramatically in a way that no one could have predicted.
On one summer morning in July - before the sun even rose - he began his day the same as always, never knowing that it would take such a heartbreaking twist.
Nickerson was on his way to work when he hit 10-year-old Kennade Paterson as the honors student crossed Maxham Road about an hour before dawn.
Police said she had snuck out with her 16-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother while their grandmother, who was watching the children for their parents, slept.
Nickerson never saw her in the road.
He stopped and pulled to the side, thinking he hit a small deer, later telling investigators he knew he had hit something.
He just didn't didn't know it was a 10-year-old girl.
Days after the 2017 crash, that driver, who was not charged, reached out to 11Alive to share a statement on the tragic accident.
"My stomach hit the floor and I felt afraid. I felt miserable. I wanted to die right then and there," he wrote, describing the moment officers told him he had hit a person. "You can't prepare for this moment no matter what you do. You can't fathom the feeling of knowing someone died and you're a part of it."
He later found out, by watching the news that day, that it was Paterson who had been killed.
"My heart broke into a million pieces and I know that while my heart will heal there will be pieces that never are put back together," he said.
After that, the then-32-year-old said he forced himself to "watch every news cast and read every story I can find" about Patterson and the accident.
"I have done this because I'm trying to understand all of this. I'm trying to cope and I'm trying to forgive myself. I understand it's not my fault but there is guilt no matter what," he wrote. "I don't sleep well and I cry a lot. But more so than the tears I hurt. I may not be crying but my soul my existence my being hurts. It aches for her and her family."
"I have shared this with all of you not because I wanted to but because I needed to," he explained.
Nickerson changed his Facebook profile photo to Patterson's, to remember the young girl. But his life turned dark.
He told 11Alive's Kaitlyn Ross years later how his life fell apart after he wrote that post.
He said he drank himself in to oblivion and got a divorce. He went numb and almost committed suicide. He said couldn’t stop thinking about Kennade and her family’s grief.
He finally went to rehab and got sober. His life came back together, but Kennade was never far from his mind.
On Oct. 17, more than two years after the tragic accident that killed her, Nickerson said he talked to her mother.
He said it was the most powerful conversation of his life.
She told him she forgave him. That she was never mad at him to begin with. She told him to live his life and be happy. That life goes on.
In that conversation, he said he found healing.
“Today I can stand up straighter, and I don’t feel that anger," he told Kaitlyn Ross.
"I am finally at peace.”
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