The crash happened May 16 on Missouri Highway 7, just yards away from her family's driveway.
"I miss that she was my little buddy," said her sister, Kymber Nash. "She always ran around with me whenever we went."
"She was just daddy's little girl," said Paul Nash, her father.
He said May 16 began like most days, with a ride to Harrisonville High School with her father. On that morning, Savannah was in the driver's seat.
"We pulled up to that intersection and we talked about the safety of that intersection because we'd had an uncle die (there) prior, five to six years prior to my daughter," Paul Nash said.
He said they made it to school that morning without an incident.
"I was able to give my daughter a kiss before, and she told me in front of all of her friends that she loved me," Paul Nash said.
That afternoon, Savannah was killed while running an errand at the same intersection that her father had warned her about.
Hours after the crash, the Missouri Highway Patrol told KMBC 9 News that the preliminary cause of the crash was because Savannah was texting. The Nash family said no way.
"There's no way," Kymber Nash said. "If you just knew Savannah, you could see her little arm muscles just clenching the wheel, gritting her teeth. There's no way she'd let go of the wheel to text."
The Nash family showed the forensic analysis of Savannah's phone, which was released to them by the Missouri Highway Patrol. The report shows that no calls were noted near the time of the collision. While there was an unsent text message in draft status on the phone, there was not enough information to determine when the message was drafted.
"The fact behind the texting was that it was never scripted to a person. It was just a typed message in draft," said Paul Nash.
KMBC 9 News also obtained the initial crash report, which does not mark distracted or inattentive driving as a cause of the crash. The report does not state anywhere that Savannah was texting at the time of the crash.
"If she had been, and (if) there was proof that she had been, I would be one of the sisters that would go school to school, talking and telling kids, 'Don't do this. You would lose your life,'" Kymber Nash said.
The Missouri Highway Patrol said the final crash reconstruction report has been sent to Jefferson City for a final review. The sergeant who spoke to KMBC said the unsent text on Savannah's phone was the basis for the initial information that texting might be a factor.
(Courtesy KMBC Kansas City, Mo
No comments:
Post a Comment