A sister and brother were killed in a triple fatal head-on collision so gruesome that an emergency responder nearly died when he suffered a massive heart attack at the catastrophic accident site.
Eric Neibaur, 15, and his 13-year-old sister, Lauren, were killed Sunday in a head-on crash on US 30 near McCammon, Idaho. The teens were on their way back from a dirt bike-riding and camping trip in Island Park when a pickup truck driven by Eric drifted into the eastbound lane and slammed into an SUV driven by Jay Lanningham, 70, of Nampa, the Idaho State Journal reports.
All three were pronounced dead at the scene. The emergency responder with Bannock County Search and Rescue who went into cardiac arrest while pulling bodies from the crumpled vehicles is expected to survive.
Meanwhile, a Bannock County sheriff’s deputy — who was met by relatives as they tried to extricate the trapped victims — was so deeply shaken that he was given the day off to recuperate. Neither official was identified by the newspaper.
Prior to the fatal wreck, the teens’ parents, Eric and Bobbi Neibaur, had been driving ahead of them, making sure everything was OK with frequent peeks in the rearview mirrors. But the teens were no longer behind their parents as they approached McCammon, prompting the elder Eric to slow down and call another relative, who told him the teens had had an accident.
State police believe they know what caused the wreck, but that information won’t be released until an investigation is complete, the Idaho State Journal reports.
Bobbi Neibaur said a friend of the family told her the teens — who were born 15 months apart — died together because God couldn’t take just one of them, saying they couldn’t live without each other. A funeral service will be held in Pocatello on Friday.
“Everybody can say that they are friends, that they loved their siblings, or whatever they want, but those two were unique,” she told the newspaper. “They had a magical connection.”