A woman captured a final photo of her three-year-old granddaughter moments before she tragically died.
Samantha Jensen’s daughter, Scarlett, was out picking flowers with her two-year-old brother Henry and their grandmother, Jamie, when tragedy struck in 2022.
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Now, two years later, Samantha has found the strength to share the last picture of her little girl alive.
In a gut-wrenching TikTok post, Samantha wrote: “My mom took this picture at 4:47PM 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.”
That sunny afternoon, Jamie had just returned from treating the kids to ice cream when Scarlett asked to hop out of her stroller to pick yellow and purple flowers in the driveway of their private property.
That’s when Jamie snapped what would become a painfully significant photo.
“That’s when my mom took the last picture I have of her alive.”
But what should have been a peaceful, joyful moment turned into unimaginable chaos. A Chevy Tahoe came speeding down the dirt road, hitting Scarlett, Henry, and Jamie before anyone could get out of the way.
Jamie screamed for the driver to stop and tried desperately to push her grandchildren to safety. But the SUV was moving “too fast.”
“Scarlett was killed almost instantly and my mom and Henry were critically injured,” Samantha told People.
Jamie lost her phone in the collision. Weeks later, once it was found, Samantha discovered the image that captured 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.”
Looking at it was “excruciating” at first.
“It was extremely painful for me to look at in the beginning. How do you come to terms with the existence of a ‘last picture’ of your child?”
But in time, the image became a source of solace. She eventually shared it on TikTok, where strangers flooded the comments with love and support.
“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,” Samantha said.
“I will forever picture her happy and carefree, picking flowers with her best friend and Meemaw.”
Following the crash, Henry was airlifted to a children’s hospital where doctors found extensive injuries.
“They found a fractured spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone, a liver laceration and several other injuries,” Samantha recalled.
The toddler “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.”
Incredibly, both Henry and Jamie survived and recovered from their physical injuries. But the emotional trauma still lingers.
Scarlett, born on New Year’s Day in 2019, was “the long-awaited first child” of Samantha and her husband.
Her grandfather, Jim Patton, remembered her as “so full of life, so full of love… such a smart little girl.” He added: “A piece of my soul is gone.”
Samantha described Scarlett 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 her, “the house feels so quiet and empty.”
The man behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe initially fled the scene on foot. He was apprehended a few miles away and is now serving a ten-year prison sentence. Samantha noted that he received two years’ credit for time served during the legal proceedings.
Her father, still stunned, asked: “How do you do that? How do you walk away from suffering?”
Some days, the pain is unbearable for Samantha.
“Some days, it feels like I am drowning, and some days I am able to tread water.”
She now shares her story publicly, determined to help others navigate grief without shame.
“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.”
