In a heartbreaking incident from 2011, three American teens lost their lives after a tragic misjudgment near a railway track in Utah’s Spanish Fork Canyon, a picturesque spot just under an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City.
Thirteen-year-old Savannah Webster had joined her older sister Kelsea Webster, 15, and Kelsea’s friend Essa Ricker, also 15, for an outing near the Covered Bridge Canyon train crossing. Like many teens of that era, the trio took selfies to capture the moment — including one just seconds before disaster struck.
Savannah, affectionately known as “Savy,” even shared a post on Facebook that read: “Standing right by a train ahaha this is awsome!!!!”
What they didn’t realize, however, was that while they were focused on a train coming from one direction, another was rapidly approaching from behind.
The now-infamous selfie shows the three girls standing close to the tracks, with the eastbound Union Pacific locomotive clearly visible in the background. Despite not being directly on the tracks, they were still within the path of danger.
The train was reportedly traveling at approximately 39 mph. John Anderson, the train’s conductor, and Michael Anderson, the engineer, both saw the girls ahead of them. As they got closer, they sounded the horn repeatedly and shouted warnings from the cabin windows.
“They were just in their own world,” John later shared in an interview with Union Pacific. “We saw them for around 12 seconds. Then they vanished from view as the train kept going forward.”
Essa and Kelsea died instantly at the scene.
When the train finally came to a halt, John and Michael rushed to help. To their shock, Savannah was still alive. John stayed with her, holding her hand in her final moments.
“I told her she’d be okay, and she seemed to calm down a little,” John recalled emotionally. “I truly believed she might pull through.”
Sadly, Savannah’s injuries were too severe. After being rushed to the hospital, doctors informed the family that the trauma to her brain was irreversible. Her family later made the painful decision to remove her from life support.