CASPER — A Casper family is still trying to comprehend their new reality after the car 18-year-old twin sisters were in hit an elk at 101 mph.
Hannah Brooks survived the Monday crash on Wyoming Highway 487, but her twin sister Sammantha didn’t.
Sammantha’s loss has left a void in the hearts of those who knew her, said her mother Sarah Hardy.
Sammantha worked as a server at Texas Roadhouse and was thrown from the vehicle, where she was riding in the passenger seat as a friend drove.
Hardy called her a “ray of light for a lot of people.”
“She was always helpful, always willing to lend a piece of advice,” Hardy told Cowboy State Daily. “Through whatever struggles she was going through in young adult and teenage life, she always made time to talk to friends and sit with them and help them.”
Hardy said Sammantha and Hannah were more than best friends, and that Hannah is “really lost without her sister and figuring out how to grieve.”
The Wyoming Department of Transportation’s fatal crash map online shows speed and driver fatigue may have contributed to the crash. It also states that Brooks did not have her seat belt on. There were four people in the car, and the other three survived.
Hardy said her understanding is that only the backseat passenger who sat next Hannah had her seat belt fastened.
In her discussions with police, she said she understands that the vehicle was traveling north on Wyoming 487 and that the driver tried to avoid hitting an elk.
But the car hit an elk and rolled. Hardy said her understanding is that Sammantha was ejected through the passenger side door as the vehicle flipped.
Passenger Grabs Sister
Hannah Brooks was saved from being ejected because a friend beside her grabbed onto her and held on as the vehicle rolled, Hardy said.
Hardy said she also has been told that the driver was traveling at an extremely high rate of speed.
“You can’t help that there were elk on the road, but I can imagine that going at that rate of speed, anything could have happened to cause them to lose control of the vehicle,” she said. “The report said specifically that they were going at 101 mph.”
A call to the Wyoming Highway Patrol about the crash was not returnedby the time this story was published.
Hardy said her daughter loved to take car trips with her twin and friends and listen to music. She also loved to spend time in the outdoors.
Sammantha was working on her GED and had thoughts about maybe getting her certified nurse assistant certificate and working in the medical field.
Sammantha had just moved out the house and was starting to find her way as an adult, Hardy said.
Another Blow
Samantha’s loss comes as Hardy, who also is a server at Texas Roadhouse, was trying to keep her residence and world afloat after Hardy’s boyfriend was on his way to work on a bike and got hit by a truck last month.
He spent a week in the hospital and has a crushed pelvis and broken leg.
“It put everything on me financially for ourselves,” Hardy said. “And for this to come up now, it has me not working because I am trying to handle all the funeral needs and the final stuff.”
Texas Roadhouse coworker Alicen Outlaw has stepped in and started a GoFundMe campaign for Hardy and Hannah Brooks as they try to find a way to honor Sammantha with a funeral service.
Outlaw said she also thought of Sammantha like a daughter.
“She was probably the kindest and purest soul I have ever known in my entire life,” Outlaw said.
Hardy said she is thankful for Outlaw’s kindness and she has not yet been able to get funeral plans together. She remains grateful the crash did not rob her of both daughters.
She said Hannah is struggling because she and Sammantha “were more than best friends.”
“She feels like she really lost her person, her best friend who has helped her through everything,” Hardy said. “We’ve never really had a lot of deaths in our family — of people my daughters were close to.
“The incident was horrific and life-changing.”
