Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
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 semitruck during Friday's snowstorm near Fillmore.
As the father makes a slow recovery in the intensive care unit, they're now hoping to track down the vehicle that they said didn't stop when the family crashed.
Marie McFarland said she and her family were headed from their home in Tremonton to a barrel race in Cedar City Friday, towing their horses in a trailer.
As they approached the canyon by Fillmore on I-15, the snowstorm was incoming and the roads were slick.
As vehicles were slowing down, she said her husband, Riley McFarland, watched another vehicle swerve into their lane and cut them off. She said he 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," she said. "He did say that he tried to steer into as less of my side of the vehicle as possible."
Their truck hit a semitruck that was experiencing trouble itself in the emergency lane, apparently jackknifed.
She said she doesn't remember the crash itself or anything after it because she suffered a serious 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 of her memory.
Her daughter's boyfriend pulled her out, she said, and she fell on the ground. First responders cut her husband out of the truck. Both went to a hospital where she said she learned she broke her foot, fractured her sternum and suffered from cuts and lacerations all over.
Her husband was flown 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 she 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," she recounted, in tears. "But we found him. We found him that night."
She said a vet checked out Dave and the horses were being monitored at the vet over the weekend. All animals seem to be OK.
"It's heartbreaking," she said, getting emotional. "It could have been so much worse. I'm so grateful that we're OK, 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 totaled. Good friends of theirs are rallying the community to help with a *GoFundMe.
The McFarlands still don't know who cut them off because the person didn't stop, according to Marie McFarland. "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 making a risky move like cutting off a truck with a horse trailer in a snowstorm. "We can't stop that quick," she explained. "We're hauling thousand-pound animals and there's four of them back there. It's impossible."
In the days since the crash, she said others have been kind and generous — everyone from the fire crew to the hospital staff in Fillmore, the towing company, the animal hospital and the 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."
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