By Haley Bradford
“We need to go to Lexington, hurry up. Brittney died,” Caitlyn Russell’s mother Felicia Russell said to her through tears on the phone. The 16-year-old was leaving Waffle House with her closest friends, Kaitlyn Poole and Kaylan Williams. Her cousin Brittney Russell was an English II teacher who was very religious and helpful to her community and the people around her.
Russell and Brittney had a close bond. They saw each other often to catch up when her cousin would visit from Lexington, Miss. When Russell arrived in the Holmes County town, she went to Brittney’s mother’s house, where she found out that her cousin had been in a fatal head-on car crash.
“I was traumatized because I was trying to figure out who did this to her,” Russell says.
During Russell’s grief, she began falling behind in school due to her inability to focus on her studies. This pain and trauma followed her for a long time, but one day she decided to change it for the better. She sat down and thought, “What does Brittney want me to do?” With this in mind, she went to school and started catching up on everything that she had fallen behind on.
Eventually, her grades improved, and she became more engaged with her family and friends. “Keep living like they are here. It does get better. It may take a while, but it does get better,” Russell says.
A year later, Russell uses the death of her cousin to inspire her to be an active member of her community. Now a junior at Ridgeland High School, Russell volunteers with her school, helping children with disabilities as well as donating her time at the country club. “Working with them makes me feel like I’m taking the role that my cousin used to have,” Russell says.
The 16-year-old loves helping her community and spending time with her closest friends and family. “I first gravitated towards Caitlyn because we have the same name,” Kaitlyn Poole, who is also a Youth Media Project student in summer 2024, said. “Something I like about Caitlyn is that she is very kind-hearted and dependable.”
Even though the death of her cousin caused her a lot of trauma, she was still able to help and care for the people she loved most, regardless of how she felt on a particular day. When you feel like giving up, she says, you should find something that motivates you to go on, and even if you feel like giving up, keep trying. “It’s my dream to be just like my mom when I grow up because she handles situations well and keeps pushing when things get tough, and I’m determined to be just like her when I am older,” Russell says.
It is Russell’s ambition to become a forensic scientist so that she can help go through evidence and identify DNA from items brought back from crime scenes so that families of crime victims can get justice. Russell plans to attend Florida A&M University.
Russell is also currently a junior at Ridgeland High School where she participates in many clubs including the Volunteer Club. She plans to continue to grow and embrace her “titan spirit” for the rest of her years at RHS. “There will always be a part of me that wants to help people—not just for myself, but for Brittney as well,” the student journalist says.
