A woman has shared a picture depicting the final moments of her granddaughter’s life shortly before the three-year-old’s tragic passing.
According to devastating reports, Scarlett Jensen was killed in a hit-and-run on October 7, 2022. Along with her 2-year-old brother, Henry, she was being minded by her grandmother as her mother, Samantha Jensen, and father were out of town for a wedding.
Yet when the three of them were out walking in the family’s private driveway in Oldtown, Idaho, something unthinkable happened. A Chevy Tahoe came racing down the road, running over Scarlett, her grandmother, and her brother.
“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,” Samantha Jensen recalled.
“Scarlett was killed almost instantly and my mom and Henry were critically injured.”
The suspect driving the Chevy fled the scene on foot before ultimately being apprehended several miles away. He is now serving a ten year prison sentence.
“Henry was life-flighted to the 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,” Samantha told PEOPLE.
“My mom had several broken bones but was able to be released from the hospital.”
She added: “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.”
In the weeks that followed, the family was enveloped in grief, but there was one small moment of reprieve when Samantha found a seemingly innocuous photo her mother had taken of Scarlett shortly before her death.
Jensen found the photo on her mom’s recovered phone and realized it was taken minutes before the crash. Scarlett had asked to pick flowers after getting ice cream, and her grandmother captured the moment. Though grief still overwhelms the family, Samantha now treasures the image as a peaceful memory of her daughter’s final moments.
