4-Year-Old Twins Climb for Help After Crash Kills Father

'They overcame every typical little kid fear. The woods, and the dark'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 9, 2019 1:51 AM CST
4-Year-Old Twins Climb for Help After Crash Kills Father
Relatives say this photo of Simmons and his daughters was taken a week before the accident.   (GoFundMe)

Two 4-year-old sisters in Washington state climbed a steep wooded embankment in the dark to seek help after a car accident killed their father, police say. The Washington State Patrol says 47-year-old father Corey Simmons died Friday evening after his Nissan Sentra came off the winding Whidbey Island road and fell more than 100 feet into a ravine, hitting trees on the way down, KING5 reports. His twin daughters, Rosaline and Aurora, escaped through the vehicle's broken back window and went for help after checking on their father, police say. After they made it back to the roadway, they were helped by a Good Samaritan who spotted the girls as she drove past.

Rosaline and Aurora were hospitalized with minor injuries after the driver called 911. Police say their father wasn't wearing a seat belt, but the girls were strapped into their booster seats when the vehicle came off the road. Police say the crashed vehicle was not visible from the road. "It’s one of the truly saddest stories, but so heroic at the exact same time. Had those little girls not had the sense of awareness they showed, we would have a missing family," Trooper Heather Axtman tells the Seattle Times. "They overcame every typical little kid fear. The woods, and the dark." She says that at this point in the investigation, police "simply don't know" why the car went off the road. A GoFundMe fundraiser for the family has raised more than $6,000. (More Washington state stories.)

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