Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- A large boulder descended onto Interstate 15 near Sandy on Friday, damaging the vehicles of several motorists, but leaving no reported injuries.
- The rock's sudden appearance and impact left drivers in shock. Two witnesses recounted their narrow escape, describing the incident as "unreal."
- The boulder's origin remains unknown, complicating liability and forcing one to cover the $1,800 repair cost out-of-pocket due to insurance limitations.
SANDY — A Midvale woman is grateful she and her daughter are alive after an intense encounter on I-15 Friday that left them shaken up.
What happened to them, apparently happened to other drivers all at once.
Sitting at the kitchen table Friday evening, Lakeysha Mapps and Gwendolyn Davis sighed as they talked about how "it has been a day."
"Unreal," Davis said, shaking her head.
That's exactly how Mapps would describe it, looking at the photos and videos on her mother's phone that show what they mean.
"I was like, 'Oh my gosh! I cannot believe this,'" she gasped, her eyes growing wide.
Davis said she's "grateful to be alive," showing pictures of the crunched and scraped metal that now marks the front driver's side of her other daughter's SUV.
The mother explained how she and her daughter, Mapps' sister, were headed southbound on I-15 Friday morning near the 9000 South exit when Davis spotted what she described as a boulder larger than a person's head.
'I thought I was going to die'
"I could see a big boulder coming at us, and I thought I was going to die; it came so quickly," she said.
Davis watched it fly right toward her daughter in the driver's seat and said there was no time for them to react.
"I prayed, asked that God … 'Move it away!'" she said. "And next thing I know, I heard BOOM!"
The boulder bounced off her daughter's car, Davis said, then bashed into four other vehicles aside from theirs.
Everyone whipped onto the shoulder, making sure they were all OK and taking stock of the damage.
"One guy, he lost his transmission because it hit his car from the bottom, ripped out his transmission," Davis said. She said the boulder shredded the tires on other vehicles.
Damage to vehicles
It left a crater on her daughter's car.
The Utah Highway Patrol told KSL-TV it responded to a call of five vehicles damaged by a boulder. Troopers said no injuries were reported, and because it was unclear where the rock came from — or flew off to — there wasn't much more they could do to investigate.
"That's the crazy part about it, is nobody knows who's responsible," Mapps said.
With the massive rock's origin a mystery, Davis said her daughter will pay out of pocket for the fix because her insurance won't cover it. An initial quote, she said, estimated $1,800.
So, that's why the women said it's been a day. But at the end of the day, they were glad the havoc wreaked by the rock wasn't worse.
"I was just so thankful that we made it out of there alive," Davis expressed. "I knew that my prayers, my immediate prayers at that moment had been answered."
