Mt. Zion youth help make keychains for families affected by ATV accident

MT. ZION, Ill. (WAND) — Wednesday evening, the youth group at Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church lent a helping hand to their community. Members sorted beads, wrote cards, and tied ribbons to help the families of their friends and classmates.

10-year-old Jack D. Brinkoetter was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital Sunday afternoon. He and another 10-year-old boy were being towed in an inner tube behind an ATV when the man driving it turned on a slope, causing the tube to slingshot into a boulder. Both boys were rushed to local hospitals; the other boy is still in critical condition.

Melissa Cotton has been using her Facebook to take on orders for keychains. She is selling them for $10, with funds being split between the two families. Amy Scranton with the Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church Youth Group reached out to help with the huge undertaking.

"There should be another place she can take them to or have help he. And it was just me — I want to just help her in some way."

She enlisted the help of the students in youth group, and they spent most of the night making keychains.

Jessica Sattley, with the Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church Youth Group, said it was a good lesson for the children in learning how to support your community. "She is doing this for the community, so we thought that we would get involved and have the kids learn: How do you serve the community by creating these keychains?"

By the end of the night, they had made 45 ribbon keychains, and had created a space where the children could ask questions and learn more about the grieving process.

"As the adult, it's kind of hard to talk to the children about what happened and kind of help them through the grieving process, because every kid would grieve differently, I'm sure. And I'm not an expert or anything, but, you kind of see how some of the kids are acting tonight and some are real, you know, acting out or some might be helping more. And so it's just how they deal with things," Sattley explained.

She also said that multiple youth group members know the two boys.

"This is definitely a small community, so everybody pretty much knows one another ... Some of them knew them, some of them didn't, but they're still able to, contribute to the overall, support system for sure."

There is also a GoFundMe for the Brinkoetter family and a GoFundMe for the other family affected.