Family remembers young Oregon boy who died suddenly as brilliant, giving

By Camila Orti

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    BEAVERTON, Oregon (KPTV) — Amari King Churchwell was small but mighty.

“His aspirations were just huge,” said his father, Kenneth Churchwell.

Amari, 8, is described as being larger than life. His parents, Kenneth and Dawn Churchwell, told FOX 12 that his smile and positive energy could change the atmosphere of any room he’d enter.

“I don’t know how his cheeks didn’t hurt because he was always like this all the time,” Kenneth said, gesturing towards a picture of Amari beaming with pride in his Wildcats baseball uniform. The third-grader loved batting, specifically.

Amari’s friends and family say he carried himself as if he was wise beyond his years, and he always wanted to help others- especially his younger brother, Ashton.

“He was his little brother’s little guardian angel, he always helped him,” Dawn Churchwell said.

Amari went home sick from school on Monday, November 8, and died later that day.

Kenneth says Amari’s elementary school reported he’d gotten sick in the nurse’s office, so he went to pick his son up.

“I just kind of asked him how are you feeling, he was like ‘I don’t know, I don’t know what happened,'” Kenneth said.

The situation deteriorated suddenly after Kenneth got home with Amari. He says he was helping his son change out of his shirt when he felt Amari’s legs go limp.

“His head just kind of fell back and his eyes rolled back, and then I knew right away something was wrong,” Kenneth said.

Kenneth told FOX 12 that he rushed Amari, who was nearly unresponsive, to the closest hospital. Doctors told the family it appears that Amari had a seizure, and CT scans later revealed the boy had a large mass near his brain stem, causing his brain to swell.

“No signs of headaches, no signs of illness, nothing,” Dawn said. “They said no surgery could bring him back.”

But Kenneth and Dawn know that Amari can continue to shine. They said Amari had always talked about becoming a doctor to specifically help children.

“He just always would say that- ‘I’m going to help a lot of people,'” Kenneth said.

Maybe he still can. The Churchwells have given OHSU the green light to study Amari’s brain and brain stem in the hopes that it could help other families down the road.

“We thought that if there’s the opportunity for them to learn about what happened, we feel like Amari would want those answers and those answers to help other people,” Kenneth said.

The family says the outreach and love from the community has been incredible. Some friends set up a GoFundMe page to help the Churchwells with medical and funeral costs, and it has raised more than $35,000.

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