This is the heartbreaking last image of a three-year-old girl picking flowers before dying in a hit-and-run minutes later.
Scarlett was playing with her little brother Henry while her grandmother Jamie watched when an out-of-control Chevy Tahoe crashed into them in Idaho in 2022.
Scarlett’s mother, Samantha, recently shared the photo on social networkswriting: ‘My mom took this photo at 4:47 pm 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 away from the stated time of their death, so it must have been seconds before the person hit them.
“This is really hard for me to watch, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart.”
Samantha’s mother Jamie had taken her grandchildren out for ice cream when Scarlett wanted to get out of her stroller.
As the girl and her brother walked down the track, a car hit the three of them, and the grandmother yelled at the driver to stop and tried to push the children out of the way.
Samantha told People: “That’s when my mom took the last photo I have of her alive.”
“Scarlett died almost instantly and my mom and Henry were seriously injured.”
Her little boy suffered a fractured spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw and collarbone, and a lacerated liver.
He and his grandmother eventually recovered, but the family is still coming to terms with the loss.
Jim Patton, Scarlett’s grandfather, said KHQ: ‘A piece of my soul is gone. She was “so full of life, so full of love…such a smart girl.”
Samantha said: ‘Without Scarlett running around the house feels very quiet and empty.
“Some days I feel like I’m drowning and other days I can tread water.”
Samantha said she decided to share her agony so people would feel “okay to cry out loud.”
“It is not necessary to do it quietly,” he added.
“Talk about your people, shout their names loud and proud and never stop sharing their stories.”
He also revealed how he felt the moment he saw the final image.
“My mom lost her phone when they got attacked and it took us a while to find it, so when we finally did, I was going through the photos and found that one,” Samantha explained.
‘It was extremely painful for me to watch at first. How do you accept the existence of a “last photograph” of your son?
The driver fled the scene after the accident, but is now reportedly serving a 10-year sentence.
Contact our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
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