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WEEKLY NEWS 2: Girl Found Alive in Car Crash

An 18-month-old girl was found alive on Monday, April 26, after she and her father skidded off road and into a creek and were then stuck overnight in near freezing temperatures. Her father, however, did not survive the crash.

The girl, Raylynn Miller, was found by a police officer who was out for a jog and stumbled across the accident scene, which was in northwest Wyoming, about a mile west of the city of Thermopolis.

Sergeant Mark Nelson found the girl Monday evening at about 5:40PM. He described her as being very calm.

“She was quiet, just sitting there,” he said in an interview with Newsday.

Raylynn was hospitalized for dehydration and possible broken bones. She survived 30 hours of being left out in the open, where temperatures dipped into the low 30s overnight.

Police and authorities said that the child survived because she was in a car seat, which she is suspected to have been released from by her dying father. “If the coroner’s correct on how long he was alive, there was some time that he could have crawled out and released her arm restraints, or she could have possibly released them herself, but she was sitting there at the scene,” said Lt. Dave Cluyas of the Highway Patrol, on Tuesday.

Her father was Shye Miller, 22, of Thermopolis. He survived up to 15 hours after the accident, according to Clark Mortimore, a coroner.

The car accident occurred after Miller lost control of his car while riding a curve on Wyoming Highway 120, probably around 11AM Sunday afternoon, the investigation showed. Trooper Dan Smith said the car was traveling at about 70 mph.

The car then went over an embankment part of the roadway and flipped, striking the ground four or five times. It went over a cement culvert and then came to a halt about 150 feet from the roadway in a creek. The accident could not be viewed from the roadway, which is why the two stayed down so long.

Smith said that several broken beer bottles were found at the scene in the car and authorities are looking into whether alcohol was a factor in the crash.

Miller’s wife, who Miller had dropped off at the Thermopolis hospital to fill out a job application at about 10:30AM. Sunday, reported the two missing. (contributing: newsday.com)

--Written by Anna Ferguson

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