Community Outpouring For Haleigh's Family

February 28, 2009

PUTNAM COUNTY, FL -- Two families stand watch at camps just a few hundred yards apart from each other.

Haleigh Cumming's mother's side of the family has been away from their homes in Baker County almost three weeks.

"It's very challenging because you don't have the luxuries you have at home because everything you need is right there at home that you're used to having, here...it's a mess," says Haleigh's grandmother Marie Griffis.

Griffis and her family have been in Satsuma so long they ran out of money to pay for the home they've been renting here.

Haleigh's father Ronald Cummings continues to stay with his side of the family at their camp.
That's even though his home is no longer a crime scene, but he says he can't go back because there are too many memories of Haleigh there.

Both families have been sustained by the generosity of strangers.
Saturday Griffis found out someone will donate a trailer for her and Haleigh's mother and other family to stay in rent free. And people are constantly coming by the camps to offer help.
Today Barbara Bone came by to give words of encouragement and to pick up flyers to pass around where she lives in Jacksonville Beach.

"It's just a nightmare, we all think it could happen to ours, it could have easily happened to ours, and your heart just aches and bleeds for these people," says Bone.