© AP Photo/The Lafayette Daily Advertiser, P.C. PiazzaDebris litters ground in Rayne, La., after a suspected tornado hit the area injuring at least nine people, leveling homes and causing natural gas leaks that prompted evacuations on Saturday, March 5, 2011.
Rayne, Louisiana - When the tornado hit this Louisiana town, Jalisa Granger was instinctively sheltering her child from the sudden, fierce winds. Pieces of homes shot skyward, debris lodged in treetops and a U.S. Postal Service truck was flipped on its side.
When it was over, the 21-year-old mother lay dead from a tree that had fallen on top of her home, authorities say. But her child survived the tornado's rampage through Rayne, a south Louisiana community of 8,500 people some 70 miles west of Baton Rouge.
Maxine Trahan, a spokeswoman for the Acadia Parish Sheriff's Office, said Granger was protecting her child when the tornado hit.
"She sheltered the child to protect her from the storm and a tree fell on the house and it killed the mother but the child was OK," Trahan said. A relative who lived nearby found the woman.
