1 week Ago By [email protected] (Paige Ingram, Jack Hobbs)
A US family is in mourning after their three year old daughter was tragically killed by a hit-and-run driver, with what's been described as her final "happy" photo taken just moments before the incident becoming a heartbreaking viral sensation on TikTok. The photograph, snapped by the child's grandmother, has captured hearts across social media after the girl's mother posted it online. "My mum took this picture at 4:47 pm and my daughter's time of death was 4:52," Samantha Jensen told her TikTok followers.
"My mum didn't know she was capturing the last moments of her life. This one is really hard for me to look at, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart." In an emotional interview with People magazine, Jensen, who is also mother to two year old Henry, shared that she was attending a wedding when the devastating event unfolded in Oldtown, Idaho.
She explained how her children were spending time with their grandmother, Jamie, on that fateful afternoon. "That afternoon they went to get ice cream and enjoy a walk together," Jensen recounted. "When they arrived home to our back driveway, Scarlett wanted to get out of the stroller to pick flowers.
That's when my mum took the last picture I have of her alive." Samantha disclosed that the family was walking in their private driveway when a car sped down the road, striking all three of them, according to Mirror US reports . "My mother was waving her hands, screaming for him to stop and she tried to grab my children to move them out of the way but he was going too fast.
Scarlett was killed almost instantly and my mum and Henry were critically injured," Samantha recounted. The driver reportedly fled the scene , but authorities managed to apprehend the individual a few miles from the site of the incident. Scarlett's grandmother and young sibling Henry were transported to hospital where the boy was treated in intensive care and the grandmother treated for a broken shoulder.
"It is a blessing we had Scarlett, she had the perfect life, just surrounded and filled with love every day," Jim Patton reminisced when speaking to the media about his granddaughter. He continued to share his heartache, saying: "A piece of my soul is gone, so full of life, so full of love. Such a smart little girl.
" Patton described how Scarlett had embarked on her academic journey and was quickly making friends, highlighting her joy at having scored a goal in a soccer match just the week before; she was eagerly looking forward to playing again the next weekend. Hospital staff reported that the boy was admitted with a multitude of injuries including eight broken ribs, a fractured spine, broken clavicle, and a broken jaw among others. "Henry 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 shared.
The woman recounted the heart-rending moment when Jamie realised the photograph she took moments before the tragic incident would be the last memory captured of her granddaughter alive. "My mum 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 pictures and found that one," explained Samantha. She added, "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.
" In the wake of the tragedy, a GoFundMe campaign has been established to support the family of Scarlett and Henry..
