5-year-old Santa Rosa boy killed in crash 'really special'

Goodbyes were never a simple matter for Addison Branson.

He needed to be thorough, inclusive, conscientious.

At preschool, he couldn’t leave without making rounds to all the students, acknowledging each by name and ensuring they all heard him.

“Bye, my friends! Bye, my ladies,” he might add.

With his father, Albert, there was the “kissing hands” ritual, where he’d have his father kiss his hand, hold it to his heart, then return the favor, christening his dad’s hand for his dad’s heart.

But there was no comfortable tradition for the farewell his loved ones faced Friday, three days after the 5-year-old Santa Rosa boy was killed in a vehicle crash on Guerneville Road at Marlow Road.

There would be a viewing, cremation and at some later date a memorial service for the pre-schooler’s family, his father said.

“I’m blessed to have had him in my life at all,” Albert Branson said. “Anyone who knows him knows that’s the truth.”

A precocious, joyful child with dark red hair and soulful blue eyes, Addison Branson was loving and empathetic, charming everyone around him, his parents and preschool teacher said.

He made friends with almost everyone in the North Dutton Road apartment complex that Branson manages and at Taylor Children’s School in Sebastopol, where Addison attended preschool.

Addison always included everyone in a room, said his mother, Allison Scott of Sebastopol. When he met someone new, he would tuck away their name only to pull it out on some later occasion, to everyone’s surprise.

“He just saw everybody for their individual selves and for who they were, and he appreciated everybody,” she said.

Addison, whose parents are divorced, lived half-time with each and loved and was loved equally, they said.

“He had so much that he could have given to the world, and he wasn’t able to,” said pre-school teacher Rebecca Taylor, who had come to know Addison as a wee child with an outsized vocabularly and an intuitive sense about the needs of those around him. “He was the genuine sweetest little kid.”

“I was thankful to be able to be there and see what a beautiful child and future man he would have become,” Taylor said. “He blessed all of us.”

Addison was in his booster seat in the back seat of his dad’s Toyota Matrix stopped at a red light after a trip Tuesday evening to Safeway when a Ford Explorer traveling at least 40 mph rammed the back of the car, catapulting it across the intersection into a light pole.

Addison suffered fatal injuries. His father’s girlfriend, Jennifer Welch, 55, suffered head and abdominal trauma and a fractured neck. She was expected to be released Friday from Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

Branson, 52, said he is still in pain after being released from the hospital Tuesday night. The driver of a Toyota Celica that also was struck was similarly treated and released, police said.

The Explorer driver, Brandi Hanley, 32, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter. Police said she was driving with a license that had been suspended for medical reasons. She suffered minor injuries.

Addision’s parents remembered their son as a boy who enjoyed nature, flowers, leaves and butterflies as much as he loved his trucks, trains and motors. He spent hours on the floor, at eye level with his toy vehicles examining what made them run, and loved explaining how things worked, they said.

He could distinguish a waning crescent moon from a waxing gibbous and loved growing flowers and vegetables.

“He’s just the best thing that ever happened to me and will ever happen to me,” his mother said, “and I’m strong because of him and strong for him. And I see him everywhere I go.”

The outpouring of community support and condolences since his death has been overwhelming, and welcome, Branson said.

“It’s humbling,” he said. “And I feel for their pain, too, especially the people that never got to meet him, because they missed out on something really special.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.