Joy Mackey News Today

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- As news alerts spread earlier this month about a deadly series of tornadoes that tore through parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri, the reports sounded all too familiar to those in Tuscaloosa.

With reports of last weeks deadly tornadoes, the scenes were all too familiar for those in Tuscaloosa where an F4 tornado killed 11 in December 2000.

Betty Weaver left her Christmas tree bare in December 2000. She was waiting to decorate the tree inside her Tuscaloosa home with her grandson, Scott Mackey. The 20-year-old student had recently returned home to the Tuscaloosa area on winter break from art school in Atlanta. But Weavers tree remained without glimmering lights and ornaments throughout the holiday that year. Scott and his mother, Joy Mackey, Weaver’s oldest daughter, died when a tornado swept through south Tuscaloosa, just...