A father made a heartwrenching discovery after tracking his two teenage daughters’ phones when they stopped answering his text messages.
Brian Trumble’s daughter, Hailey, 19, and Shelby, 17, were tragically killed in a car crash in Ira, NY on Thursday (August 1) night.
The devastated dad told PEOPLE the sisters were returning from Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester when the horrific accident occurred.
The Cayuga County Sheriff’s Office disclosed in a press release that the girls were driving to their home in Fulton when their Chevrolet Cobalt “crested a hill,” swerved into the opposite lane, and crashed into a Jeep Cherokee around 6PM. The driver of that vehicle survived and was transported to a hospital for her injuries.
Brian opened up about the tragedy to Syracuse.com, revealing that he texted his daughters several times when they did not return home that night.
He then decided to use the Find My Friends app to track down their location and saw they were on Ferris Road in Cato – which was about three miles from where he was – so he drove there but was stopped by Cuyahoga County sheriff’s deputies who were already cordoning off the area.
He was then approached by officers who told him that two girls had been involved in an accident down the road and that one had died instantly in the tragic wreck. Brian later learned that it was Shelby.
“I just sat on my bumper and I couldn’t stand up,” the dad recounted, noting that the nearby police and firemen were there to support him.
The bereaved dad then discovered that his other daughter Hailey was still alive when first responders arrived. One of the firemen, Josh Lovejoy, told Brian that he stayed with the teenager until the end.
“Since then, we’ve all just been holding on each other and just coping and trying to deal,” he said.
The girls had recently graduated high school, Hailey in 2023 and Shelby in 2024, according to their father.
The cause of the fatal collision remains unclear, and an investigation is ongoing. “It’s much too early to say exactly what happened, and what caused this crash, and what factors were involved,” Sheriff Brian Schneck told CNY Central. “But we are looking at every piece of evidence that we can.”
Schneck continued: “We’re going to be very careful about how much time we take because we want to get answers, we want to have confirmation as to what happened here.”
“Because not only do we want to make sure that we’ve got a thorough investigation but we also want to have answers for the families of the people involved,” he added.
In his last in-person conversation with his daughters earlier that morning, Brian revealed he gave them $100 for the amusement park and told them he loved them, and to “have fun and behave”.
A GoFundMe has now been set up for the Trumble family. The money will go to funeral expenses and unforeseen medical bills. A service for the teenagers will be held on Saturday, August 10 at Traub Funeral Home in Central Square.
“They were both just sweet and lovely and very good,” the father shared, noting that they were both animal lovers and “simple country girls” at heart.
“They touched so many people,” he said. “Everybody that met ’em just loved them. They’re just super sweet and kind and really smart, very smart. They were pretty much just figuring out what they were wanting to do.”
The teens will be cremated “so they’ll always be together,” which their dad says gives him “some sort of peace”.
Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy.