New York dad learns his 2 teenage daughters died after tracking phones to crash site
The father of two teenage girls killed in an upstate New York car accident last week said he learned about the tragedy by tracking their phone's location.
Hailey Trumble, 19, and Shelby Trumble, 17, died from injuries sustained in the Thursday evening crash in Ira, a small town just outside of Syracuse, the sheriff's office wrote on a Facebook post.
Police said Hailey was driving a Chevy Cobalt eastbound when it crested a hill, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with another vehicle heading westbound. The driver of the other vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, was hospitalized with serious injuries and was in stable condition, the sheriff's office said.
The teen's father Brian Trumble told Syracuse.com that the girls were heading home from the Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit when the fatal crash happened only 3 miles from their home in Granby home.
“It’s a tremendous loss,” he told the outlet. “It’s never going to be the same again.”
Father said he used the 'Find My' Friends app
Trumble said that on the evening of the crash, he was concerned when neither of his daughters answered his several texts and phone calls, the outlet reported.
He decided to use Apple's "Find My" app to track their iphone's locations and drove to the scene of the crash, the outlet reported. By the time he arrived officers already sectioned off the roads and he got the worst news of his life.
"An officer asked what I was doing, what I was looking for," Brian told Syracuse.com. "I told him I was looking for my daughters."
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Mother says girls were 'so full of life'
Trumble and his wife, Tina Trumble, described their daughters as simple country girls interested in animals, crafts, camping and fishing, according to Syracuse.com. The sisters would often paint each other’s nails or watch shows like "Gilmore Girls" and "Heartland."
Shelby graduated high school in June and Hailey last year, the outlet reported. Shelby worked at Reeves Farm Stand in Baldwinsville while Hailey was set to begin a new daycare job on Monday, Brian Trumble said.
"They were everything that you wish you could be," Tina Trumble told the outlet. "So full of life. They were loved and so beautiful."
A GoFundMe page has raised nearly $40,000 as of Tuesday to support the Trumble family's funeral expenses in a "time of unimaginable loss and need." A funeral service has been scheduled for on Saturday, Aug. 10.