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Friday, November 13, 2026Nov 13

Shocked Murray County residents band together to pick up the pieces from Sunday’s storm

Staff Photo by Patrick Filbin / Kelly Patterson, 58, takes the last box of her belongings from her apartment on Highway 286 in Murray County to the motel room she's staying in Tuesday, April 14, 2020.
Staff Photo by Patrick Filbin / Kelly Patterson, 58, takes the last box of her belongings from her apartment on Highway 286 in Murray County to the motel room she's staying in Tuesday, April 14, 2020.

Kelly Patterson was standing in her kitchen when one of her neighbors told her a tornado was coming.

Patterson opened the front door to her second-story apartment and saw the trees out front in the parking lot bend and flatten.

Her purse was on the kitchen counter. Her plan was to grab her purse, her phone and yell for her puppy Elly Mae – a chihuahua-Jack Russell terrier mix – and lock themselves in the bathroom until the storm passed.

Patterson grabbed her purse, but that was all she could do before the roof fell on her.

“I barely had time to pick it up,” she said. “It was really scary. It was bad.”