Pictured above is Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck who was 25 years old before she crashed into the Spanish Fork River on Friday night and immediately died. Her daughter Lily was still strapped into her car seat, where it is suspected that she had been throughout the night for approximately 14 hours.
“The driver’s side tire went up the cement barrier on the south end of the bridge, launching this woman and her baby into the freezing water,” Lt. Cory Slaymaker told KUTV.
Both the baby and Lynn Groesbeck might have died unnoticed in the river had a man not gone fishing in that particular spot on Saturday. “Where the car was, you couldn’t see it from the roadway,” said Slaymaker. The angler came along around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday approximately 14 hours after it was suspected that the car had crashed
Some of the first responders had to be treated for hypothermia only being in the water for a short while yet Lily was able to survive the night! Though she wasn’t submerged, the weather that night was still bitterly cold.
A Voice From the Dust?
All four rescuing police officers heard an adult voice shout, “Help Me! Help Me!” — which led to the discovery of Lily. One officer actually responded out loud to the voice.
“It felt like I could hear someone telling me, ‘I need help,'” Officer Bryan DeWitt told KSL. “It was very surreal, something that I felt like I could hear.”
Officer Jared Warner said he heard the same thing.
“(It) wasn’t just in our heads,” he told KSL. “To me, it was plain as day. I remember hearing a voice that didn’t sound like a child, just saying ‘help me.'”
Officer Tyler Beddoes who was the third officer at the scene, repeated those sentiments.
“Someone said ‘help me’ inside that car,” he said.
Lily is still fighting to recover and there is a Gofundme Page that has been setup for donations going towards medical expenses and funeral costs for her mother. If you would like to contribute, you can donate here. As of Monday morning, they have raised $19,000 of their original $8,000 goal.
The family also thanked the policemen and firefighters for risking their lives to save Lily’s.
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