By Ben Cox
Photos/Special to The Source
A South Jacksonville cross training gym closed their doors on May 3 and took several of their members to Crossfit XLT to participate in a fundraising challenge and silent auction to benefit one of the victims in the tragic accident.
Four students were killed at the YNOT After School building in Chatham on April 28 and several others were injured. The victims, Ainsley Johnson, 8; Kathryn Corley, 7; and Alma Buhnerkempe, 7; all of Chatham, and counselor Rylee Britton, 18, of Springfield, all died in the tragedy. Six other children were injured at the scene and hospitalized.
Carriage House Fitness co-owner Torri Tarrillion says that Crossfit XLT decided to put together a memorial workout and fundraiser to help one of the injured children with their hospital bills. Livi Tuttle was welcomed back home on May 9 after spending over a week in the hospital with multiple injuries. Tarrillion says one of her parents was a member of the Crossfit XLT gym, “The gym had already scheduled an open house and they decided to leave it as an open house and turn it into a fundraiser. They invited everyone to come and bring a free-will donation and they had a number of silent auction items. The actual workout we did was in honor of the victims. All of the numbers we did had importance. Their ages were the types of some of the reps we did. Ultimately, we had 12-16 people that went from our gym and participated. We closed our gym for the day and encouraged all of our members to go over.”
She says the rep numbers were meant to be difficult but also to have extra meaning in order to commemorate the victims, “It’s something for people to think about and why they are doing the workout they are doing. It’s like that with these types of challenges.”
Tarrillion says at least 7 gyms from the surrounding area did the same thing and the event raised approximately $10,000 to offset the costs for Livi’s medical bills. Over 400 people went through the workout.
Carriage House Fitness is now training for Memorial Day weekend when they have a similar challenge called “The Murph.” The Murph Challenge is the official annual fundraiser of the Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation, presented by Forged®. It is also one of the primary means of funding for the foundation on an annual basis, which has raised over $2.2 million since 2014. Lt. Murphy was a Navy SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal Honor for heroic actions in combat during the War in Afghanistan in 2005.
