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   MOORE, Okla. (AP) — Nicknamed "The Wall," 8-year-old Kyle Davis loved soccer and going to Monster Truck exhibitions at the fairgrounds with his grandfather. JaNae Hornsby, 9, loved to draw, sing, and be a big sister and cousin to her younger relatives.

   The two were among the young victims of Monday's monstrous tornado, their small bodies pulled from the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary School after it was reduced to a massive heap of bricks and twisted metal. Twenty-two others were killed, including five other 9-year-olds at the one-story building.

   As the ominous funnel cloud began its 17-mile path, Kyle took shelter in the school's gymnasium with dozens of other students, his grandfather Marvin Dixon said Wednesday.

   "He was in the position that the teacher told them to be in —crouched down with their hands over their heads," Dixon said. "The medical examiner said either some big rock or beam or something fell right on the back of his neck. He said he died instantly."

   Dixon counted his grandson among the lucky ones. The medical examiner reported the six other children who died at the school suffocated after being buried under a mass of bricks, steel and other materials as the building collapsed. Dixon said a morgue worker told him some of the children who suffocated were huddled in one of the school's bathrooms.

   "He said some of the kids were hurt so bad it was tough to even identify them," Dixon said, his voice cracking with emotion.

   Kyle earned his nickname, "The Wall," because of the ferocity with which he played his favorite sport — soccer.

   "He was a pretty big kid," his grandfather said. "Whenever he had the ball, other kids would just bounce off of him. That's why they called him that. ... He was just the kindest, most giving kid you would ever meet. He had a grin from ear to ear."

   JaNae's father Joshua rushed toward the Plaza Towers school when he realized the powerful tornado packing speeds up to 200 mph was bearing down on the town. But it took him 30 minutes. The tornado already slammed through the building.

   "I was just in panic," Hornsby said, recalling those minutes when he realized the school had been hit and he hadn't made it in time.

   "I just kept going until I got to the school and when I got to the school I started to look for JaNae," he said Wednesday, sitting on the small front porch of a relative's home in nearby Oklahoma City.

   By then, the third-grader was among those suffocated beneath the debris. The official cause of death was mechanical asphyxia.

   Frantic, he combed through the rubble with other students and first responders looking desperately for JaNae. Slowly, more and more children were pulled from the rubble. Some had scratches and bruises. Some were bleeding. But they were alive. And none of them were JaNae.

   With each passing minute, "there was still more panic," Hornsby said.

   For two days, Hornsby and a small group of parents whose children were not found in the rubble waited at a church in Moore.

   "I was still hopeful that maybe she would turn up," Hornsby said, thinking she might be at a friend's house or someplace else.

   On Tuesday, he was at the church when he received the news.

   His daughter was among the 10 children killed, buried under the rubble of a school that had always been a safe haven for them.

   The family's house, just three blocks from the school, also was destroyed. He hasn't gone back to see if he might find a few of JaNae's things to keep.

   "JaNae was the life of the party. If JaNae was there you were having a good time. She liked to sing, be a big sister, be a big cousin. She liked to draw," he said smiling as he remembered the small girl.

   As family gathered to make funeral arrangements and comfort one another, Hornsby looked behind him into the house.

   "If she was here she would just have everybody laughing and she would be in the midst of everything. She loved the spotlight," he said.

   The family of 9-year-old Christopher Legg described him as someone who never met a stranger. Christopher, who also suffocated inside the school, played football, baseball and basketball and "loved to roughhouse and wrestle" with his father, older brother and little sister, his family said in a statement. The youngster also faced his diagnosis with skin cancer and joint problems in his knees "with the same strength and enthusiasm that he had for life."

   Sydney Angle, another 9-year-old killed at Plaza Towers, was lovingly referred to as "a pickle" by her softball coach Landon McNeill, who was with the girl's parents as they waited at a church for news about their daughter.

   "Sydney was real quirky," McNeill said. "She could be anywhere and have fun doing it."

Tornado survivors in Joplin, Missouri are reaching out to help the victims of yesterday's devastating Oklahoma storm.  

Officials in the southwest Missouri city have brought together a team of public safety employees that they are sending to the tornado-stricken town of Moore, Oklahoma.

More than 150 people died when Joplin was devastated two years ago by the most deadly tornado in U.S. history.

A team of about a dozen Joplin area police and firefighters have been assembled to assist in Moore.

Meantime, more severe weather is in the forecast for parts of the central United States already reeling from powerful tornadoes this week.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., says golf ball-sized hail, powerful winds and isolated, strong tornadoes could strike areas of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma on Tuesday. The area at risk does not include Moore, Okla., where dozens of people were killed in a monstrous tornado Monday.

Forecasters say the greatest risk for severe weather Tuesday includes the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The National Weather Service is predicting flash flooding in parts of Arkansas and Louisiana as the storm system dumps several inches of rain in a short time frame Tuesday afternoon.

In Moore, where search and rescue operations continue, showers and thunderstorms are expected Tuesday with heavy rainfall.

   

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Officials at two hospitals say they're treating nearly 60 patients, including more than a dozen children, after a massive tornado hit suburban Oklahoma City.

Integris Southwest Medical Center spokeswoman Brooke Cayot (KAY'-ot) said 10 of 37 patients being treated at that facility Monday are listed in critical condition. Twelve are in serious and 15 others are listed in fair or good condition.

Five of the patients are children, including two who came from the Plaza Towers Elementary School, where an Associated Press photographer saw several children being pulled from the rubble. Cayot could not confirm the children's conditions.

Spokesman Scott Coppenbarger says another 20 patients of various ages are being treated at OU Medical Center. He says eight of them are children.

 MOORE, Okla. (AP) - Neighborhoods are flattened and buildings are on fire after a mile-wide tornado moved through the Oklahoma City area.

Television footage on Monday afternoon showed homes and buildings that had been reduced to rubble in Moore, Okla., south of Oklahoma City. Footage also showed vehicles littering roadways south and southwest of Oklahoma City.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The suburb of Moore was hit hard by a tornado in 1999. The storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth's surface.

   There are no immediate reports of damage after four earthquakes rattled central Oklahoma overnight.

   The U.S. Geological Survey reports that an earthquake and a series of aftershocks began about 1:45 a.m. Central Time with a magnitude 3.0 quake centered about 3 miles west-southwest of Chandler, Oklahoma.  

   That was followed a few minutes later by a magnitude 4.3 quake near Oklahoma City. US Geological Service puts the epicenter of the quake 7 miles east-northeast of Luther, Oklahoma, and about 29 miles east-northeast of Oklahoma City.  

   At 2:15 a.m. the ground shook again.  This time a 2.8 magnitude quake struck about 54 miles east of the capital, followed a minute later by a 3.3 magnitude temblor about 4 miles east of Luther.  

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing an Oklahoma woman in 1999 as part of a three-state killing spree is scheduled for execution.

Steven Ray Thacker is to be put to death at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester for the December 1999 killing of Laci Dawn Hill in Mayes County.

Thacker - who waived his clemency hearing - would be the first person executed in Oklahoma this year.

Prosecutors say Thacker killed Hill after answering a newspaper ad she and her husband had placed to sell a pool table - then later killed Forrest Boyd in Missouri and Ray Patterson in Tennessee in the 10 days following Hill's slaying.

Thacker also faces a death penalty for the Tennessee slaying and life in prison in Missouri.

Charges could be filed Wednesday against the man police believe murdered an Oklahoma woman whose baby was found abandoned in a Breckenridge Hills apartment building in January. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that police have arrested a man who reportedly had a previous relationship with the victim, Ebony Jackson.

Investigators believe Jackson was killed in the suspect's north city home, not far from where her body was found stuffed in the trunk of her own car. The paper reports that the suspect's current girlfriend lives in the apartment building where Jackson's baby was found.