Arizona mom posts tribute after running over baby daughter

An Arizona woman has posted a heart-breaking tribute for her one-year-old daughter after allegedly running over the girl with her car outside the family’s home. 

Jafria Thornburg described her daughter, Cyra Thoeming, as the “light of my life” in the 13 months before she died in Cottonwood on Thursday — when the mother called police to say she had struck her toddler while moving her car.  

“She is so loved and was wanted and needed in my life for sooooo many years. I finally felt complete having her,” Thornburg wrote in a GoFundMe post Monday. “A piece of me is gone forever and nothing will ever be the same.”

Cyra was with her mom outside the family’s home when tragedy struck – the woman called the Yavapai Sheriff’s Office and said “she had run over her 13-month-old baby with her car,” police said. 

The woman had placed her daughter in her car seat in an area where she believed her daughter was safe while she moved her vehicle, the sheriff’s office said. 

“While repositioning the vehicle, the front tire caught the canopy of the car seat, causing it to fall backward which led to the infant suffering critical injuries,” the sheriff’s office wrote.

Cyra was rushed to a local hospital, but she could not be saved. 

“The name Cyra meaning light in several languages, one translating to the light off of God’s throne,” Thornburg wrote in the Monday post. She called her daughter “beautiful and funny and smart.”

“I was so ready to show her the world. We gave her such a big life in the little time she had and for that I am grateful,” she wrote, alongside several photos of the family together. She thanked the community for the support. 

“We never expected to have to deal with anything like this in our lives,” she went on. 

Thornburg has not been charged and sheriff’s investigators are continuing to probe the death.