Saved by Snapchat
Crash mum and girl, 7, are found using app
TRAPPED in a ditch after veering off the road, Gemma Fairweather and her daughter Martha feared the worst.
Miss Fairweather, 38, rang for help – but rescuers were unable to find her and Martha, seven, after they plunged 20ft through bushes down an embankment.
Sitting in the darkness with their doors jammed for more than 40 minutes, they were afraid to move in case the car shifted into deep water. But help came from an unlikely source – a techsavvy teenager. For as Miss Fairweather spoke to the emergency services on the phone, she received a message from her boyfriend Graham Potts’s son Sam, 15, telling her to open the social media app Snapchat.
The app, primarily used to send photos and videos, also includes a GPS-style tool, Snap Map, which pinpoints users’ whereabouts using their phone signal. This allowed Sam to tell the emergency services exactly where the car was.
Miss Fairweather, a teacher, had crashed just after 10pm on Sunday as she drove home to Wymondham, Norfolk after visiting Mr Potts in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
She dipped the headlights on her Citroen C3 as an oncoming car approached and lost control at a sharp bend. The car ended up in the ditch in total darkness as the headlights were smashed.
‘It was very worrying because we could hear the sounds of running water and I could tell the car was right next to it,’ Miss Fairweather said. ‘We were on a slope and I felt that the slightest movement could send us toppling in.’
She honked her horn but police, paramedics and firemen driving nearby were unable to find them until Sam used Snapchat’s location feature.
‘It was such a relief when help arrived. It was very scary waiting but it could have been a lot worse if we had tried to move,’ she said.
Miss Fairweather and Martha both escaped with minor bruises.