Teacher who was killed loved helping kids

Loyce Cody helped children who had challenges and disabilities.

As a special-education teacher, she handled young children with so much caring, so much understanding, that to some parents, she was like a grandmother.

Being a grandmother was important to the 69-year-old Augusta woman. She “especially enjoyed her grandchildren,” her obituary said. Listed among her survivors is 18-year-old Jacob Hoyt, who along with his 19-year-old girlfriend, Lyndsey Giovinazzo, was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in Cody’s death.

When investigators went to check on Cody last Monday, after she didn’t come to work at Cessna Elementary in Wichita, they found her body in a bedroom of the house where she lived alone on Sunset Drive in Augusta. She appeared to have been strangled. Her 2010 Toyota Corolla, her bank debit card and candy from her home had been stolen, authorities said.

Cody’s sister-in law, Judy Basolo, who went to high school with her in McAlester, Okla., said, “We always thought of Loyce as a happy person. … She was just a fun person to be around because she was so positive.”

She had worked her way through college, partly by throwing newspapers. She was a Sunday-school teacher.

“She loved her family, and they loved her,” Basolo said.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s just a hard thing to comprehend, just the tragedy of it all. It shouldn’t happen to anybody. But it’s just unfathomable that it happened to her because she had such a good heart. Just none of it makes any sense.”

Memories shared

Last Tuesday, a Wichita school district crisis team had to deal with the loss. Cody, who had worked at Cessna Elementary for about five years, taught a morning session and an afternoon session for pre-kindergarten special-education children. An administrator gathered the children in a circle. She told them that although a number of grown-ups were in the room with them, one of the adults was missing. The administrator told the children she had some sad news: Ms. Cody had died. She won’t be coming back.

Her students are around 4, so to them, death is a concept that is hard to understand. To a 4-year-old, death is temporary, reversible. So the administrator had to let her words sink in.

She told the children that she was sad about the news. She told them that they might see their teachers crying, because the teachers’ hearts were sad. Crying is OK, she said.

But the administrator also wanted the children to share memories. She remembered how Ms. Cody had a big smile, and when the administrator made an exaggerated smile, everyone giggled.

Someone recalled that on the school’s Crazy Hair Day, Ms. Cody wore many small braids in her hair, and everyone laughed about that.

One by one the children recalled that she taught them letters and numbers, and one boy shared, “She taught me to sit still.”

“She taught me timeout,” a girl added.

A couple of the fathers asked the staff what they could do for their children now that they were exposed to losing their teacher. The advice: Give them a lot of love and hugs. Read them a story. Listen. Let them ask questions. Cook them a favorite meal. Let them share a memory.

Previous problems

Hoyt, Cody’s grandson, who will turn 19 in a few days, was wanted in Washington County, Okla., after he failed to appear in court for his sentencing in November after pleading guilty to misdemeanor marijuana possession, records show.

In a Butler County, Kan., court last week, where he was told of the murder and theft charges that had been filed against him, Hoyt said he had become unemployed after working at a Coffeyville fast-food outlet. When he asked Judge Mike Ward if Kansas had a death penalty, the judge noted that Hoyt was not charged with capital murder, the charge that would be necessary to face the death penalty.

In August, Hoyt’s girlfriend, Giovinazzo, who was living in Bartlesville, Okla., had been a defendant in an emergency order of protection filed in Washington County by a former friend who alleged that Giovinazzo was harassing her. According to other court records, the protective order was dismissed Nov. 17.

The two are each being held in the Butler County Jail under a $1 million bond.