An Idaho grandmother took a picture of her three-year-old granddaughter mere seconds before she was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
Samantha Jensen’s mom Jamie was babysitting young Scarlett and her two-year-old brother Henry when the unthinkable happened in 2022.
It’s only now, two years later, that she has felt ready to share the final picture of her kids playing together before Scarlett was tragically killed.
In a post on TikTok, Samantha wrote: ‘My mom took this picture at 4:47 pm and my daughter’s time of death was 4:52. My mom didn’t know she was capturing the last moments of her life.
‘I looked at the timestamp and realized it was only five minutes before her declared time of death, so it must have been taken seconds before the person hit them.’
‘This one is really hard for me to look at, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart.’
Jamie had only just returned home from taking the children to get ice cream when Scarlett wanted to get out of her stroller to pick flowers.
‘That’s when my mom took the last picture I have of her alive.’
While the little girl was busy gathering yellow and purple flowers in their private driveway, a Chevy Tahoe came hurtling down the dirt road. It struck Scarlett, as well as her little brother and grandmother.
Before the Tahoe hit them, Jamie screamed at the driver to stop and tried to push her grandchildren out of the way.
But the man driving the car was going ‘too fast.’
‘Scarlett was killed almost instantly and my mom and Henry were critically injured,’ Samantha recalled to People.
The grief-stricken mother didn’t realize until weeks afterwards that her mother had taken a picture that documented Scarlett’s final moments.
‘My mom lost her phone when they were hit and it took us a while to find it, so when we finally did I was going through the pictures and found that one,’ Samantha said.
Looking at the picture was initially ‘excruciating’ for Samantha.
‘It was extremely painful for me to look at in the beginning. How do you come to terms wit the existence of a “last picture” of your child?’
But two years later, she has come to appreciate the photo, finding comfort in the tranquil scene it depicts, sharing it on her TikTok account which prompted heartwarming responses from strangers.
Samantha said: ‘I am so incredibly thankful to have that photo. It captures the peaceful feeling of her last moments, the beauty she was surrounded by when she took her last breaths.
‘I will forever picture her happy and carefree, picking flowers with her best friend and Meemaw.’
Following the collision, Henry had to be life-flighted to a children’s hospital where ‘they found a fractured spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone, a liver laceration and several other injuries.’
The two-year-old boy ‘spent a week in the PICU before he was stable enough to come home, and he had a full body brace on for 10 weeks,’ Samantha said.
Eventually, Henry and his grandmother managed to recover from their injuries.
But the grieving family still grapples with emotional wounds. Born on New Year’s Day of 2019, Scarlett was ‘the long-awaited first child’ of Samantha and her husband.
Jim Patton, Scarlett’s grandfather, told KHQ that she was ‘so full of life, so full of love…such a smart little girl.’
‘A piece of my soul is gone.’
Samantha described her daughter as ‘the silliest, sweetest little girl.’
‘She loved horses, unicorns, being a big sister, and the movies Frozen and Spirit.
‘The absolute joy of her life were her siblings. She loved helping take care of baby Molly and playing with her best friend Henry.’
Without Scarlett running around, ‘the house feels so quiet and empty without her.’
The family still struggles to understand the actions of the driver involved in the incident. After initially fleeing the scene on foot, he was picked up by authorities a few miles away.
‘How do you do that? How do you walk away from suffering?’ Patton asked.
According to Samantha, the driver is now serving ten years in prison, although he received two years credited for the time he spent behind bars during the legal proceedings.
Occasionally, the mother finds her grief overwhelming. ‘Some days, it feels like I am drowning, and some days I am able to tread water.’
Samantha said she decided to share her emotional journey on social media so that others could see ‘that it is okay to grieve loudly.’
‘You don’t have to do it in silence. Talk about your people, scream their names loud and proud and never stop sharing their stories.’