Mom tried to free kids from car

A young mother and her two children were trapped in a car that had landed upside down in the cold and fast-moving Spring Creek near Clark Fork, Idaho, on Saturday afternoon

The accident took the lives of a 2-year-old boy and his 8-month-old brother.

“The doors were locked. My granddaughter couldn’t get out. Then there came a man – I guess he was an angel. He came and broke out the window and reached in to unlock the door so the mother of the children could get out,” said Nina Hinkle, who is the grandmother of Bethany Ashmoore, the car’s driver, and great-grandmother of the two boys who died.

On Monday, family and friends struggled to come to grips with the sudden deaths of Jeremy and Bethany Ashmoore’s two sons.

Friends of the couple, from Fairfield in southeastern Spokane County, opened two benefit funds at area banks Monday morning.

And an Idaho State Police trooper said frost on the road may have contributed to the wreck.

Benefit accounts to help the Ashmoores have been established at Washington Trust Bank and at the Bank of Fairfield, which has branches in the little eastern Washington farming towns of Fairfield, Rockford, Rosalia and Spangle.

On Saturday, Bethany Ashmoore was returning from a visit to her mom, who lives near Clark Fork, Idaho, when the car she was driving, a 1998 Subaru Legacy, went off a road and landed upside down in about four feet of water in Spring Creek, the Idaho State Police reported.

Leslie Lehman, the Idaho State Police trooper investigating the crash, said the driver’s side doors were damaged in the rollover and the passenger doors bore the brunt of the current in Spring Creek.

Hinkle said her granddaughter, after being freed from the car by the mysterious stranger, tried to reach her two sons, 2-year-old Thane and 8-month-old Cameron.

“My granddaughter dove under water six times to try and reach in and unbuckle them. Finally she did, but it was too late,” Hinkle said. “The current was so swift. The water was up to her eyebrows.”

Hinkle said Bethany Ashmoore was finally able to unbuckle the car seats and get her two sons to shore. Attempts to revive the boys by people who had stopped to help were in vain.

“The mom was conscious the whole time. She gave her heart and soul to try and get them out,” Lehman said.

Hinkle said hypothermia killed the boys and that their parents have already donated Thane and Cameron’s eyes and hearts to organ donation programs. “There wasn’t a mark on the bodies,” she said.

Lehman said the road, Spring Creek Road, is hard-packed gravel and dirt but serves an estimated 150 to 200 homes near Clark Fork and sees plenty of traffic.

Other drivers were on the scene moments after the crash and were able to offer aid to Bethany Ashmoore, who was treated for hypothermia at Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint and then released.

Lehman, after preliminary interviews with witnesses, said the road was damp and a layer of frost had formed. The car was heading into a tight turn and apparently went off the left side of the road into the creek as Ashmoore slowed for the corner. The car rolled once, Lehman said, and came to rest upside down in the water.

Until she completes all her interviews with witnesses, Lehman said it is hard to be certain of the sequence of events. It appears, Lehman said, the children were in the water for 10 or 15 minutes before they were pulled from the car – in their car seats – and taken ashore where people performed CPR until an ambulance arrived.

Friends of the family were shocked to hear about the wreck.

“Oh boy, you read an article that has a headline ‘Two kids die in vehicle accident’ and your heart goes out automatically, of course. Then you get halfway through and you start looking at the names again and realize ‘Hey I know these people,’ ” said David Seefeld of Spokane, who became acquainted with Jeremy Ashmoore when both worked in a cabinet maker’s apprenticeship program.

Seefeld rushed to open a benefit account at Washington Trust Bank within minutes of reading about the rollover Monday morning. At the same time Monday, other friends of the family opened a benefit account at the Bank of Fairfield.

The funds are not competing. People involved in both efforts say they only intend to provide some assistance for a young family that suddenly has to pay for two funerals and will likely need other help getting through the shock and grief.

Jeremy Ashmoore had dreamed of opening his own cabinet shop next to his home, Seefeld said, and had worked extra hours for years to bring that dream to fruition just two weeks ago. Jeremy Ashmoore was working Saturday on his first contract, building cabinets for a Latah, Wash., church, Seefeld said.

“Jeremy and I worked side-by-side,” Seefeld said. “The last three or four years, he would work 10-hour shifts in order to get Fridays off to work on building his own shop or to get jobs to get the money to set up his shop.”

The goal was to be able to work near his home so he and Bethany could home-school their children, Seefeld said.

Linda Wagner, a friend of Jeremy’s mother, Debbie Ashmoore, helped open the benefit fund at the Bank of Fairfield.

“This is such a terrible, terrible thing to happen,” Wagner said. “They were Debbie’s only grandchildren.”

Hinkle said she had lunch with Bethany Ashmoore and the two boys Saturday.

When they were leaving, “I said ‘Grammy wants a kiss,’ ” Hinkle said. “Little Thane had never kissed me. Usually he is too shy. But he gave me a kiss right on the lips for the first time.”