'Just the Best Kids': Educators, Neighbors Talk About Victims of SLP Pond Car Crash

Five-year-old Amani N. Coleman-Guerrido was looking forward to Thursday.

He was set to be “person of the day” at his Odyssey Academy kindergarten class. It's a chance to serve as privileged helper to his teacher, Laura Montray, as his classmates volunteered to do his regular work.

But Amani never got the chance.

Shortly after 6 a.m. his mother, Marion M. Guerrido, drove her car into an icy holding pond in St. Louis Park.

Inside the Pontiac Grand Am, Amani was joined by Guerrido’s 1-year-old daughter, Aliyana E. Rennie; her 7-year-old son, Alarious M. Coleman-Guerrido; and her boyfriend's two daughters, Zenavia C. Rennie, 5, and Zarihana M. Rennie, 6. Zenavia Rennie and Alarious M. Coleman-Guerrido died Thursday; the other three were listed in serious condition as of early Friday afternoon.

Montray, Amani’s kindergarten teacher, told KARE 11 he was the third of the five children she had the pleasure of having in class.

“They’re so sweet and so nice, just the best kids, they really are,” she said. “When I saw I had another one coming, it just put a smile on my face, they’re awesome kids.”

John Sedey, Odyssey Academy’s executive director, told the station the school, which four of the five children attend, was bringing in grief counselors Friday to talk to kids and teachers.

“It doesn’t get any worse than that,” he said. “It’s devastating to the staff, okay, because everybody feels so close to all of our students.”

Amy Minor, the Rennie girls’ aunt and a neighbor of Guerrido, said she saw Guerrido leave her Brooklyn Center home Thursday morning with the children.

“She was a very nice mother, very friendly,” Minor told the Star Tribune. “She took good care of her children.”

Anthony Maxwell, another neighbor, agreed in an interview with CBS Minnesota.

“She’s a damn good mom,” he said. “We be knowing her for five years. That’s a damn good mom, lovely. She even helped raise her boyfriend’s kids—she’s a good mother.”