A five-year-old girl helped her younger brothers survive a tragic car accident that claimed the lives of their parents on Christmas Day.
The three children somehow miraculously survived in the car wreckage for two days in the hot Australian summer weather.
Cindy Braddock, 25, and Jake Day, 28, and their three young children attended a party in Northam, Western Australia. They left the party at around 1 am on Sunday, Christmas Day.
On their way home to Kondinin, a small town about 124 miles away from where the party was held, their SUV crashed and rolled into an embankment.
Family members got worried when the young family were not reachable 12 hours after they had started their journey.
Police were notified and a missing person report was filed on Monday afternoon.
A relative searched the route the family had driven, and found the couple’s Land Rover Discovery six miles from their home. The bodies of Braddock and Day were found in the wreckage of the car on Tuesday afternoon.
When police arrived, they pronounced the parents dead at the scene. The dehydrated children were found with stable injuries. They had miraculously survived the accident and had been on their own for more than 48 hours in the hot car.
Michael Read, a cousin, said that the five-year-old had probably saved the lives of the two younger boys. According to the cousin, the girl was able to free herself from her seatbelt after the crash and she removed her one-year-old brother from his car seat. She was unable to remove the seatbelt of the two-year-old. The three children remained in the car for more than 48 hours in the 86 degree heat.
The cousin noted that it would have been extremely difficult for the kids to stay inside the car for the whole time, adding that no one knows what horror and pain they went through.
Read said the three children were injured but their injuries were not life-threatening.
A gas station attendant in Northam, who may have been the last person to speak to the parents, said they stopped at the station at 1 am on Christmas day for fuel, used the bathrooms, and bought snacks and drinks before they left.
The attendant said they looked tired and that although Mr. Day told him the drive was a couple of hours, he did not buy a cup of coffee.
