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Family suffers tragedy twice within just weeks

As recently as a month ago, Joe Weiand and Terri Ellis were ecstatic about a new addition.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published November 14, 2006

TAMPA - It was going to be a baby girl. Her name would be Paytan Ashland Weiand, the same initials as her grandmother.

Joe Alan Weiand, 28, and fiancee Terri Ellis, 27, couldn't have been more excited as they went to work on the nursery in their new home.

Weiand chose paint colors with names that seemed to promise happiness: sorbet, giggles and plum. He bought a crib, a dresser and framed a beautiful watercolor of children flying kites.

It was as if he hoped to make up for past mistakes. Weiand battled alcoholism, Ellis said, and when he drank too much, he had a tendency to become violent, sometimes so violent he'd be arrested. His record included battery, domestic violence and assault charges.

But preparing for Paytan helped Weiand sober up. He stopped drinking, Ellis said, and spent more time with his two older children, ages 9 and 11, hoping to get joint custody.

But life didn't go as planned.

Oct. 23, five days past Paytan's due date, the couple arrived at the hospital, ready to greet their baby girl. Instead, a tearful doctor delivered the news.

The baby had no heartbeat.

Weiand and Ellis buried the infant at Garden of Memories. Even after medical tests, they never learned exactly why she had died, after kicking only days earlier.

Weiand withdrew emotionally, Ellis said. His employer, an air condition service company, helped keep him busy with work.

Sunday, his 29th birthday, Weiand worked all day. Ellis begged him to let her take him out to Ruth's Chris Steak House. He resisted, but she made reservations at the Westshore Boulevard restaurant anyway.

He cried throughout dinner, she said.

"He wasn't much for celebrating his birthday last night because he wanted his baby girl with him," a tearful Ellis said Monday.

On the drive home, Weiand decided he wanted to walk. He wanted to be alone. Ellis let him out near Memorial Highway, about 8 miles from home.

It is a moment, one decision, Ellis wishes she could undo.

Just before 11:30 p.m., Tampa Fire Rescue responded to an pedestrian crash on State Road 589, just south of Memorial.

Weiand was dead at the scene. Lily Huu Ngo, 57, of Tampa was driving an SUV northbound when she struck him as he walked north in the right-hand lane of the road, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

FHP spokesman Larry Coggins said it's hard to determine exactly why Weiand was walking in the road. But Ngo, the driver, was not charged.

Ellis doesn't know how she will do it now. A crib, a dresser and a water color still await a baby that will never come home. She hasn't touched the nursery. Now she will have to go through Weiand's things too. How, she wonders, will she find the strength?

"I just shouldn't have left him," she said. "I should have just turned around."

Rebecca Catalanello can be reached at 813 226-3383 or rcatalanello@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 14, 2006, 05:39:13]