A silver 2017 Nissan Sentra veered off a road in rural Washington state, barreled down a steep embankment, struck several trees and came to a stop.
The driver, Corey Simmons, 47, died in the crash, police said.
His daughters, 4-year-old twins Rosaline and Aurora Crider, were secured in booster seats in the back seat of the car, according to police.
Somehow the girls managed to get out of their seats and crawl out of a broken window at the back of the vehicle. Shoeless, they crawled 100 feet up a ravine to the road, police said.
There, the girls stood on the side of a two-lane road on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, where a woman driving by saw them and pulled over.
“They kept saying, ‘My daddy, my daddy,’ ” said Trooper Heather Axtman of the Washington State Patrol. The passer-by, who did not want her name released by the police, looked around for the crashed vehicle that the girls were in. Not seeing one, she called 911.
State troopers called the twins heroic for their ability to survive.
“Most kids have the fear of dark, and it was pitch black, and not well lit,” Axtman said. They were able, she said, to overcome typical fears “that little kids have to commandeer themselves to help.”
The crash remains under investigation. The authorities said it was unclear why Simmons’ car had veered to the right and off the road. “We don’t know if he had a medical emergency or if he fell asleep at the wheel or if an animal jumped out in front of the car,” Axtman said.
Credit: VIA ESTHER CRIDER
Credit: VIA ESTHER CRIDER
Simmons, who was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the 6 p.m. crash, suffered a fatal head injury, police said.
The girls were taken to Whidbey Health Medical Center, where one child was treated for a bump on the head and another was treated for a scratch on her arm, according to police records. They were released from the hospital.
Esther Crider, the mother of the twins, referred questions to the twins’ half sister, Rebecah Crider, 24. In an interview, Rebecah Crider said the woman who had stopped when she saw the girls on the roadside “kept them warm until the ambulance came.” She added, “We are trying to talk to her as soon as we can.”
"They are saying, 'My daddy's dead,' but they don't have a concept of death yet ... They think he is coming back."
At the hospital, the girls kept saying their “daddy was all bloody and that they were trying to wake him up and they couldn’t,” Rebecah Crider said.
“They are saying, ‘My daddy’s dead,’ but they don’t have a concept of death yet,” Rebecah Crider said. “They think he is coming back.”
Even though they witnessed the gruesome death of their father, the twin girls have begun behaving like “normal 4-year-olds,” she added, except when they get tired and ask for him.
But most toddlers are strong when faced with traumatic events, said Dr. Victor M. Fornari, the vice chair and director of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at The Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York.
“Children who experience a traumatic event such as this, if they have no prior trauma and are in good health generally, they are very resilient,” Fornari said, adding the twins were mature and intelligent to realize that they were in an unsafe situation.
“They suffered the loss of their father,” Fornari said. “It’s the trauma of loss that they will have to deal with.”
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