An Idaho grandmother snapped a photo of her three-year-old granddaughter just seconds before she was killed in an accident while picking flowers.
Samantha Jensen’s mother was babysitting young Scarlett and her two-year-old brother Henry when the unthinkable happened in 2022.
Only now, two years later, does she feel ready to share the last photo of her children playing together before Scarlett was tragically killed.
In a post on TikTok, Samantha wrote: ‘My mother took this photo at 4:47 pm and my daughter’s time of death was 4:52 pm. My mother didn’t know she was recording the last moments of her life.
“I looked at the time stamp and realized it was only five minutes before she had reported the time of death, so it must have been a few seconds before the person hit him.”
Samantha Jensen posted the photo to TikTok and wrote, “My mom took this photo at 4:47 PM and my daughter’s time of death was 4:52 PM. My mother didn’t know she was recording the last moments of her life.
“Scarlett was killed almost immediately and my mother and Henry were seriously injured,” the girl’s mother recalled
“This is really hard for me to watch, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart.”
Jamie had barely gotten home from taking the kids ice cream when Scarlett got out of her stroller to pick flowers.
“Then my mother took the last photo I have of her alive.”
As the little girl was collecting yellow and purple flowers in their driveway, a Chevy Tahoe came barreling down the dirt road. It affected Scarlett, as well as her brother and grandmother.
Before the Tahoe hit them, Jamie yelled at the driver to stop and tried to push her grandchildren out of the way.
But the man driving the car was driving ‘too fast’.
As the little girl was collecting yellow and purple flowers in their driveway, a Chevy Tahoe came barreling down the dirt road. It affected Scarlett, as well as her brother and grandmother
“Scarlett was killed almost immediately and my mother and Henry were seriously injured,” Samantha recalled People.
The grief-stricken mother only realized weeks later that her mother had taken a photo documenting her Scarlett’s last moments.
“My mom lost her phone when they got hit and it took us a while to find it, so when we finally did, I went through the photos and found it,” Samantha said.
Viewing the photo was initially “unbearable” for Samantha.
‘At first I found it extremely painful to watch. How do you come to terms with the existence of a ‘last photo’ of your child?’
Scarlett was killed while collecting purple and yellow flowers
But two years later, she has come to appreciate the photo and finds comfort in the peaceful scene it depicts. shares it on her TikTok account which led to heartwarming reactions from strangers.
Samantha said: ‘I’m so incredibly grateful to have that photo. It captures the peaceful feeling of her last moments, the beauty that surrounded her as she took her last breath.
“I’ll always imagine her happy and carefree, picking flowers with her best friend and Meemaw.”
After the collision, Henry had to be life-flighted to a children’s hospital, where “they found a broken spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone, a lacerated liver 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 was in a full-body brace for 10 weeks,” Samantha said.
Ultimately, Henry and his grandmother managed to recover from their serious injuries.
But the grieving family still struggles with emotional wounds. Scarlett was born on New Year’s Day 2019 and was ‘the long-awaited first child’ of Samantha and her husband.
Scarlett loved being an older sister and considered her brother, Henry, her best friend
Jim Patton, Scarlett’s grandfather, told the story KHQ that she was “so full of life, so full of love… such a smart 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 was her brothers and sisters. She loved caring for baby Molly and playing with her best friend Henry.”
Without Scarlett running around, “the house feels so quiet and empty without her.”
The family is still struggling to understand the actions of the driver involved in the incident. After initially fleeing the scene on foot, he was captured by authorities a few miles away.
‘How do you do that? How do you walk away from suffering?’ Patton asked.
Samantha described her daughter as ‘the silliest, sweetest little girl’
According to Samantha, the driver is now serving a 10-year prison sentence, although he was given two years credit for time spent behind bars during the legal proceedings.
Occasionally the mother finds her grief overwhelming. “Some days I feel like I’m drowning, and some days I can tread water.”
Samantha said she decided to share her emotional journey on social media so others could see “that it’s okay to grieve loudly.”
‘You don’t have to do it in silence. Talk about your people, shout their names loud and proud and never stop sharing their stories.”