Carla Cope and her husband spoke to their son, Clayton Cope, 29, by phone on Friday night as a tornado veered toward the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., where Mr. Cope was working. He assured his parents that he and other workers were on their way to the tornado shelter on site.
About 10 minutes later, the tornado struck the warehouse, sending the walls crashing down.
The Copes tried numerous times to reach their son again by phone and eventually drove to the warehouse from their home in Brighton, Ill., a half-hour away.
“When we pulled up to the building it was pretty devastating,” said Ms. Cope. “There were trucks and rescue vehicles everywhere, a lot of chaos.”
Their son, they learned, was among at least six people killed when the building was hit.
When her husband saw the damage to the warehouse, he immediately feared the worst, Ms. Cope said. He works the same job as a maintenance mechanic that Mr. Cope did, splitting the night shifts with his son, except on Wednesdays, when the two work together. He knew that their son was likely to have been in the part of the building that collapsed.
“If it wasn’t my son, it would have been my husband,” said Ms. Cope.
The couple waited at the warehouse until 4:30 a.m., when officials finally informed them that they had recovered their son’s body.
“There’s just really no words to describe it when they tell you your son’s dead,” said Ms. Cope, her voice cracking. “It’s surreal, unbelievable, devastating.”
On the phone before the tornado struck, Mr. Cope didn’t sound scared, Ms. Cope said. She imagines that her son, whom she described as having a “big heart,” had left the shelter to try to help a co-worker. On the phone, he had said that he needed to make sure everyone knew to take shelter.
Mr. Cope had worked at the warehouse for a year. Previously, he spent six years in the Navy, including deployments to the Mediterranean, before he was given an honorable discharge five years ago. He loved to ride his motorcycle and go fishing, said Ms. Cope, and spend time with his hound dog, Draco. He would often come to his parents’ house — about a 10-minute drive from his house in Alton, Ill. — to cook dinner together.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” said Ms. Cope. “That’s about all I can say at this point.”
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