Dani Countryman

Dani Countryman appeared to be turning her life around, when life turned on her.

The 15-year-old Kaufman County girl, who relatives say was making plans to return to high school after skipping the spring semester, was found strangled Saturday morning in an apartment in Oregon. She was to have flown home to Texas only hours later after a three-week vacation in the Portland area.

The trip had been a welcome respite after what her grandmother, Sandra Wright of Kaufman, said had been "kind of a rough year" for Dani.

"She went though a lot of emotional problems, just dealing with things going on in her life," Wright said.

But in the last three months, her grandmother said, Dani "had done a 180-degree turnaround. ... Her attitude changed. The talking back stopped. I got more hugs and kisses and more 'I love you's.' "

Dani had withdrawn from Kaufman High School as a freshman in January. Weeks earlier, on Dec. 19, she had been present for her father's arrest on drug charges during a traffic stop. According to a sworn statement from a Kaufman police detective, Dani – then 14 – told police that as the officer was pulling them over, her father had asked her to hide two rocks of crack cocaine and a glass pipe.

Donald Eugene Countryman, 41, was indicted Friday on charges of delivering an illegal drug to a minor – Dani; possession of drug paraphernalia; and endangering a child.

Although Dani was at Kaufman High only half of last year, Principal John Rouse said the school counselor would have been available to talk to her.

"We do have a counselor here, if some students need to talk, even in the summertime," Rouse said. "We want to provide any help that we can."

Her grandmother said Dani had been determined to restart – and finish – her freshman year.

Wright said she and Dani spent two weeks together in Oregon, attending a relative's wedding and hanging out at a beach house. But when Wright came home, Dani decided to spend another week with her half sister, Ashley, whom she didn't get to see often.

On Friday night, Dani's last, she and Ashley went to an apartment complex in the town of Milwaukie, where Ashley's boyfriend lived.

"This is a place with a swimming pool with green algae in it, a Dumpster that's overflowing, and people hanging over the balconies smoking their cigarettes and scratching their tattoos," Clackamas County Sheriff's Detective Jim Strovink said. He said deputies had responded to 54 calls at the complex since Jan. 1.

Detective Strovink said Ashley's boyfriend lived in Apartment 22. Ashley found her sister's body in Apartment 21 at 8 a.m. Saturday.

"Someone said they saw her at 2 [a.m.], another person said they saw her smoking a cigarette at 5 [a.m.], but I don't know what the investigators have nailed that down to," Detective Strovink said.

As of Monday afternoon, detectives had spoken with "a large pool of individuals," he said, but the only arrests had been of two people for unrelated parole violations.

Detective Strovink said investigators were still awaiting a determination of whether Dani was sexually assaulted. They also were awaiting the results of toxicology tests. Investigators found no illegal drugs at the site.

"I think alcohol was the major substance consumed that night," the detective said.

Dani's father, who had been in the Kaufman County Jail since March 5 on an unrelated charge of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, posted bond Sunday and was freed to await trial.

Neither the Kaufman County district attorney's office nor public defender Andrew Jordan would comment on how Dani's death might affect the drug case against him.

"Any time a member of a family dies or is killed, that's a traumatic event, and I'm sure the DA's office, as well as my office, is going to be hesitant to discuss that," Jordan said.

Wright called the cases against Donald Countryman a "mess" and added: "I'm not defending what he's done, but I am defending him for what they're saying he's done that he hasn't. There's a lot that's going to happen in the next six months about his case."

In the meantime, there's a family tragedy to address and memories of a young girl whose life was cut short.

"She was sweet, she was sensitive, she was loyal to a fault," Wright said. "If she cared about somebody and anybody said anything about them, she'd leap to their defense. There's not anybody who knew her who didn't love her. When she smiled at you, you knew she cared."

And now, Wright said, "There's an emptiness in all of us that won't be filled up, ever.

"I lost a son once, Daniel, her namesake [in a traffic accident in 1986], and now I'm going through this again."