Family grateful to be alive after violent crash near Fillmore
Oct 22, 2024, 7:12 AM | Updated: 9:46 am
FILLMORE — A Tremonton family is feeling grateful they’re alive, recounting the moments they say a vehicle on Interstate 15 cut them off, causing them to crash into a semi during Friday’s snowstorm near Fillmore.
As the family’s father makes a slow recovery in the ICU, they’re now hoping to track down the vehicle that they said didn’t stop when the family crashed.
In the meantime, friends are fundraising to help the family after the crash left both parents unable to work.
Marie McFarland said she and her family were headed down from their home in Tremonton to a barrel race in Cedar City Friday, towing their horses in a trailer.
As they were coming up into the canyon by Fillmore on I-15, the snowstorm was incoming and the roads were slick.
As vehicles were slowing down, Marie McFarland said her husband Riley McFarland watched another vehicle swerve into their lane and cut them off. She said her husband tried to avoid hitting the vehicle, causing him to veer into the emergency lane.
“We were just sliding at that point, because we were taken off course, and of course the snow was so bad,” Marie McFarland said. “He did say that he tried to steer into as less of my side of the vehicle as possible.”
Their truck hit a semi that was itself in some trouble in the emergency lane, apparently jackknifed.
The front of the McFarland’s truck (left) and the back of the horse trailer (right) after the crash. (Courtesy McFarland Family)
Marie McFarland said she doesn’t remember the crash itself or anything after it, because she suffered a bad concussion and went into shock. She said her two daughters and one of her daughter’s boyfriends in the backseat were not hurt, and have had to fill in the gaps.
Her daughter’s boyfriend had to pull her out, Marie McFarland said, and she fell on the ground. First responders had to cut her husband out of the truck.
Both went to the hospital where Marie McFarland said she learned she broke her foot, fractured her sternum and suffered from cuts and lacerations all over.
Her husband was flown by plane to Utah Valley Hospital, she said, where three days later he is in the ICU having undergone surgeries to remove his spleen and replace his ribs. She said he suffered internal bleeding, and a punctured collapsed lung.
She initially lost her corgi, Dave, who is blind and was sitting on her lap during the crash. No one could find Dave around the snowy crash site until the next day when Marie McFarland said her family returned and her daughter spotted Dave about 100 yards away, hunkered down.
“He’d been laying there. He probably didn’t dare to move because he couldn’t see anything,” Marie McFarland recounted, in tears. “But we found him. We found him that night.”
Marie McFarland said a vet checked out Dave and the horses were being monitored at the vet over the weekend. All animals seem to be okay.
Marie McFarland’s family found their blind corgi, David, (left) one day after the crash near the crash stie. The horses survived and weren’t injured. (Courtesy McFarland Family)
“It’s heartbreaking,” Marie McFarland said, getting emotional. “It could have been so much worse. I’m so grateful we’re okay, and I’m glad nobody else was hurt.”
The family is now taking on the burden of not being able to work, plus medical bills and their truck being completely totaled.
Good friends of theirs are rallying the community together to help with a *GoFundMe to ease the burden.
They still don’t know who cut them off, because Marie McFarland said the person drove off and didn’t stop.
“I’m hoping that somebody will come forward and identify the individual so we can get this situated,” she said.
She’s hoping others will think twice before taking a risky move like cutting off a truck with a horse trailer in a snowstorm.
“We can’t stop that quick,” Marie McFarland explained. “We’re hauling thousand-pound animals and there’s four of them back there… it’s impossible.”
In the days since the crash, Marie McFarland said everyone has been kind and generous, from the fire crew to the hospital in Fillmore, to the towing company; the animal hospital and her general community.
“I want to really thank my friends, and family, and my community. We have such a wonderful community up here that’s been absolutely wonderful,” she said. “And everybody that reached out with their prayers and their thoughts, it just means so much to me.”
*KSL TV does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisors and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to remove a term used to describe the crash as “hit-and-run.” Since the vehicle at fault did not make contact with the trailer or the semitruck, it was updated.
