Who was Clayton Cope? Amazon worker, 29, died trying to warn others of tornado
An alert was issued on Friday night, December 10, as a deadly tornado approached Illinois. Clayton Cope, 29, who worked at an Amazon Delivery facility, decided to alert others about the impending disaster even though his mother, Carla, urged him “to get to shelter”. Clayton was one of the several people who lost their lives due to the storm.
“He just said he needed to tell someone that [the tornado] was coming,” Carla told The Daily Beast on Saturday, December 11, hours after six people were killed in Edwardsville, Illinois, due to the storms. “He had a big heart and he was a very sweet man.”
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Who was Clayton Cope?
According to a Navy spokesperson, Clayton, who was killed in the disaster, enlisted in 2010 and for a majority of his service served as an Aviation Electronics Technician. He bagged several awards and decorations before he separated from the Navy in 2016 -- including the national defense service medal and the global war on terrorism expeditionary medal. Clayton, who started his job as a maintenance mechanic at the Amazon fulfillment center, “loved riding his Harley and fishing" when he was not working, Carla said.
“He was a ‘one of one’ kind of person,” Leighton Grothaus, one of Clayton’s longtime friends, said. “I knew him most of my life. He was the kind of person who would take the shirt off his back for anyone. He would go out of his way to say hi, bubbly, buy anyone a drink at the bar.” Grothaus last spoke to Clayton on Friday afternoon, December 10. “I am at home visiting for the weekend and I wanted to set up a lunch for today,” said Grothaus, a 25-year-old full-time farmer. “He was so excited and we were both looking forward to it.”
Soon after, a friend informed Grothaus that “the Amazon building collapsed.” “That’s when I got that real sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I started texting Claying, calling him. But he never answered,” he said. “It was devastating.”
Carla learnt about her son's death at around 4:30 am, when authorities confirmed that he was among those who lost their lives in the disaster. “[It was] gut-wrenching, nauseating, and heartbreaking,” Carla said. According to officials, the roof off the Amazon warehouse was taken off by the storm. Besides those killed, dozens of employees were trapped inside the building. The storm destroyed the entire southern portion of the warehouse. “About half of it’s missing, it’s gone,” Edwardsville Fire Department Mark Mayfield said.
A series of destructive tornadoes and storms swept across as many as five states -- Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri in the past few days. The storms injured numerous people and the death toll is expected to rise to over 100. As a result of the storms, more than 2,00,000 customers remained without power as of Saturday morning, December 11, in Tennessee and Kentucky.