A grieving mom has shared the final photograph of her young daughter taken just minutes before she was struck and killed by a hit and run driver.
Samantha Jensen’s daughter, Scarlett, will forever be a part of her family. “I have four children,” she told Newsweek. “Three on Earth and one in Heaven.”
Scarlett June Jensen came into the world on New Year’s Day in 2019. “She was our long-awaited first child,” Jensen said. In time, Scarlett would be joined by siblings Henry and Molly. The latter was just a couple of months old when Scarlett was taken from this world in the most devastating of circumstances.
On October 7, 2022, Jensen was out of town for a wedding and had taken Molly, then only a baby, with her while her mom watched Scarlett and Henry. “That afternoon they went to get ice cream and enjoy a walk together,” Jensen said. “When they arrived home to our back driveway, Scarlett wanted to get out of the stroller to pick flowers. That’s when my mom took the last picture I have of her alive.”
Samantha Jensen
The image, which Jensen shared to her TikTok account @samjensen44 last week, shows Scarlett and Henry walking along the road at 4:47 p.m. Jensen said that by 4:52 p.m. Scarlett would be dead.
“My mom didn’t know she was capturing the last moments of her life,” the image’s text overlay reads. “This one is really hard for me to look at, just knowing what comes next breaks my heart.”
The image has so far received over 27 million views and over 2 million likes.
Moments after the photo was taken, a car, driven by Dakota LaFountain, sped up the road towards them. “My mother was waving her hands screaming for him to stop and she tried to grab my children to move them out of the way, but he was going too fast,” Jensen said.
Scarlett was killed almost instantly while her grandmother and Henry were left critically injured. LaFountain, who had previously been diagnosed with a mental illness and later alleged in court that he was having an episode at the time of the incident, fled the scene on foot. He was later apprehended a few miles away. In March of this year, LaFountain was sentenced to 10 years in prison over the hit and run incident.
Henry was taken by air ambulance to a children’s hospital. It was discovered he had suffered a fractured spine, six broken ribs, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone, a liver laceration and several other injuries. Jensen’s mom, meanwhile, was left with several broken bones.
Thinking back to that awful day, Jensen can still remember coming off the plane that brought her back from the wedding and realizing “something was wrong.”
“I got an emergency alert on my phone that said my road was closed due to heavy emergency vehicle presence, so I tried to call my mom and she didn’t answer,” she said. “Then over the plane loudspeaker they called my name and said the police were waiting for me when I got off and that’s when I knew something was really wrong.”
Samantha Jensen
What followed is difficult to imagine as police informed Jensen of what happened. “I remember sitting on the floor of the airport screaming while holding my 2-month-old baby and the police were trying to comfort me,” she said.
Jensen had barely enough time to process what was unfolding as she traveled to be by Henry’s side at the hospital. “Walking into the hospital and seeing my son in critical condition is a mother’s nightmare,” she said. “I was grieving the loss of my daughter while also trying to be present and focus on my son’s healing. It was impossible to be everything that everyone needed at once.”
Jensen’s mom would be released from the hospital later that same day, but Henry would spend a full week in the Pediatric ICU before he was deemed stable enough to come home. He would go on to spend the next 10 weeks in a full body brace.
Two years have passed since then. Henry has made a recovery and Jensen welcomed a fourth child, Rosie, into the family a year ago. “Two years have gone by incredibly fast. Some days it feels like it’s been 10 years and some days it feels like yesterday,” she said. “Grief is not linear, it doesn’t get better with time. You just learn how to carry it better.”
Jensen said she has “put in a lot of work” in therapy but still struggles from “PTSD” over what happened.
She has been able to draw strength from her Christian faith and her friends and family. “My children are the reason I wake up every morning, and my friends have cared for me so well,” Jensen said. “My community really rallied around us these last two years, they made sure we were taken care of and healing.”
Samantha Jensen
Scarlett is never far from her thoughts. “Scarlett was the silliest, sweetest little girl. She loved horses, unicorns, being a big sister, and the movies Frozen and Spirit. She liked to play hide-and-seek, go to the park, go to preschool and play soccer,” Jensen said. “The absolute joy of her life were her siblings, she loved helping take care of baby Molly and playing with her best friend Henry.”
Jensen said she used to find it “too difficult” to even look at that picture of her daughter knowing it was the final one, but that’s changed now.
“Now I look at the picture and I see a precious little girl picking flowers surrounded the beauty of nature with her brother and Meemaw, two people she loved deeply. Her last moments were peaceful and happy and she was surrounded by love.”
She’s thankful for every one of the kind comments left on her TikTok videos of Scarlett and hopes they help people to realize the importance of loving those around you and those who have passed on to a better place.
“Take the pictures, hug your babies, read the extra story at bedtime,” Jensen said. “Enjoy every single moment with the people you love, and live life to the fullest in honor of the people you have lost.”
