On Sunday, Samantha Jensen posted the final picture taken of her 3-year-old daughter to TikTok. The heartbreaking picture went viral, gathering over 20 million views.
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According to an interview with PEOPLE, Samantha Jensen lost her daughter, Scarlett, in a hit-and-run. Scarlett was with her brother, Henry, and her grandmother, Jamie.
The grandmother took a picture of the two children at 4:47 pm. The car, a Chevy Tahoe, hit the three of them speeding down the road only minutes later. Scarlett was pronounced dead at 4:52 pm.
The picture is of both Scarlett and Henry walking down a private road, unaware of the grandmother taking the picture. When posting the image to Tiktok, Samantha captions over it, "This one is really hard for me to look at, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart."
https://www.tiktok.com/@samjensen44/photo/7425113834051996958Child Killed Minutes After Grandmother Takes A Picture
The hit-and-run happened on October 7th 2022. Jensen was out of town to attend a wedding and left her two kids in the care of their grandmother.
"That afternoon they went to get ice cream and enjoy a walk together," Jensen tells PEOPLE.
"When they arrived home to our back driveway, Scarlett wanted to get out of the stroller to pick flowers. That's when my mom took the last picture I have of her alive," she continues.
Shortly after is when the speeding Chevy careened down the road and hit them. Samantha was dead upon impact. Henry and Jamie were critically injured. The driver tried to get away on foot but was apprehended a few miles away. He is currently serving 10 years in prison.
Henry suffered "a fractured spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone, a liver laceration and several other injuries." It's a miracle he survived. He 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."
Jensen's mother suffered "several broken bones but was able to be released from the hospital."
The photo from the grandmother was revealed to Jensen two weeks after the tragedy. The grandmother's phone was initially lost upon the hit but was recovered a fortnight after. Jensen found the photo when scrolling through the gallery.
This month marks two years since the horrid and tragic incident. The picture holds insurmountable grief, and is heartbreaking to look at.
