A 9-year-old girl lay trapped next to her dead father for nearly two days after the car they were riding in skidded off a North Carolina highway and flipped into a wooded embankment on Friday night. She survived by sipping on Gatorade and eating small pieces of Pop Tarts. Hit the jump to read the story.
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Jordan Landon fought for survival amid plummeting temperatures, sipping on Gatorade and nibbling on cold Pop-Tarts, before rescue crews finally found her pinned inside her dad’s wrecked 1995 Chevy Monte Carlo on Sunday evening, local ABC station WCTI 12 reported.
Landon and her father, Douglas, 39, were driving to their Cove City, N.C., home from a store at around 10 p.m. Friday night when he lost control and crashed upside down into steep culvert off Highway 55, police said.
The girl’s mother reported her missing on Saturday, but search crews found no sign of the wreck for more than 40 hours.
A passerby spotted the car on Sunday afternoon and called 911.
Emergency crews used the Jaws of Life to cut Jordan Landon free at around 6 p.m. Sunday night and airlifted her to a county hospital, where she was reported to recovering.
Temperatures in the area had dropped into the 30s during the two nights she spent trapped in the totaled Chevy.
Investigators said the speedometer inside the car showed that Douglas Landon was driving more than 100 mph before the crash.
But friend and family disputed that account, saying there was no way the doting dad was going that fast with his daughter in the car.
“He wasn’t speeding, there is no way in God’s green earth he was speeding,” his boss and friend Butch Morse told the station.
Family friend Kevin Brinson said Landon spent his final moments trying to protect his daughter.
“He was curled up in a ball with his arm right across his chest and his other arm pushed out across Jordan. He was trying to hold her and trying to keep her protected, he was a good father,” Brinson told WCTI.
Investigators suspected that driver fatigue contributed to the crash, the station reported.
