Natasha Colon, left, and Nicole Callahan, both of Newburgh, N.Y., visit a memorial at the boat ramp where Lashanda Armstrong drove her minivan into the Hudson River on Tuesday night killing herself and three of her children, in Newburgh, on Thursday, April 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)NEWBURGH, N.Y. – A suicidal mother who loaded her four children into a minivan and drove off a boat ramp into the frigid Hudson River changed her mind as the van sank and cried, “I made a mistake, I made a terrible mistake,” said her 10-year-old son, who survived by crawling out a window and swimming ashore.
Lashanda Armstrong had warned in a cryptic Facebook message just before the fatal plunge: “I’m so sorry everyone forgive me please for what I’m gonna do…. This Is It!!!!”
Her 10-year-old son, the only survivor as his mother and three siblings drowned, says she had told the children, “You’re all going to die with me,” but then tried, too late, to back out of the river, according to a woman who found the sopping wet boy.
Meave Ryan was driving past the boat ramp in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, on Tuesday evening when she spotted the boy, La’Shaun Armstrong, waving his arms.
Ryan said the boy told her that his mother had had a “big, big argument about my stepdad’s cheating on her,” then piled the four children in the minivan and sped into the river.