Brian Trumble, Syracuse, NY dad tracks his missing teen daughters phones to scene of deadly crash only to discover the two girls, Hailey and Shelby Trumble killed in fatal car crash.
An Upstate NY father has shared the moment he came to discover the whereabouts of his missing two teen daughters after they failed to come home overnight after tracking their phone devices and following their signals, only to find a macabre crash scene which claimed the lives of his two daughters.
Brian Trumble told Syracuse.com he was texting his daughters – Hailey Trumble, 19, and Shelby Trumble, 17 – several times when they did not return home from the Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester, Thursday night.
The dad then decided to use the Find My Friends app to track down their whereabouts on his phone and drove just a few miles to the location it showed.
Fatal collision remains under investigation
Upon arriving, the parent found that his two teenage daughters had died in a fatal crash, with Cuyahoga County sheriff’s deputies cordoning off the area.
‘An officer asked what I was doing, what I was looking for,’ Brian recounted. ‘I told him I was looking for my daughters.’
The teenagers were riding in a Chevy Cobalt vehicle traveling eastbound on Ira Hill Road when their car ‘crested a hill and crossed into the opposite lane, striking a second vehicle,’ the sheriff’s office announced Monday.
‘Both Hailey and Shelby Trumble died as a result of the injuries they sustained at the time of the crash.’
The other driver, identified as 59 year old Robin Latham, was transported to Syracuse University Hospital with serious injuries, where she remains in stable condition.
The cause of the fatal collision remains unclear, and an investigation is ongoing even as a memorial was set up on the side of the road for the sisters.
‘It’s much too early to say exactly what happened, and what caused this crash and what factors were involved,’ Sheriff Brian Schneck told CNY Central.
‘But we are looking at every piece of evidence that we can.’
‘Have fun and behave’
He added that officials have not found any evidence that any of the drivers were intoxicated at the time of the crash. At the time of the crash, the sisters were two to three miles away from the Granby family home.
In his last in-person conversation with his daughters earlier that morning, Brian Trumble said he gave them $100 for the amusement park and told them he loved them, and to ‘have fun and behave.’
Stressed the father, ‘They didn’t need to be told to be behaved, but this is what I always tell them.’
Brian believes his daughters were unfamiliar with the ‘hilly, windy road’ they were driving on when the crash occurred, and that they likely lost control of the vehicle after going ‘too fast’ over the top of a hill.
The girls had recently graduated high school, Hailey in 2023 and Shelby in 2024 – completing an Oswego BOCES Cosmetology program.
‘It’s a tremendous loss,’ the parent said. ‘It’s never going to be the same again.’
He and the girls’ mother, Tina, described their daughters as simple country girls who loved animals and being outdoors.
Brian said he is now seeking solace in the fact that the two girls were together when they died.
‘One thing that I have taken away from all this [is] that it gives me some kind of peace – it makes me happy that they were together,’ he told Syracuse.com.
The sisters were very close, their parents said, and would often paint each other’s nails and watch Gilmore Girls and Heartland together.
They also enjoyed fishing, with Tina recounting how when Shelby was in elementary school, she would hop off the bus and run straight to the pond.
‘She’d run down this dirt road to the pond that was out back, in like the middle of a cornfield, and go fishing every day,’ she said, noting that they would also include their older brother, Riley.
Tina said losing her daughters is now the hardest thing she will ever go through.
‘They were everything that wish you could be. So full of life,’ Tina said.
‘They were loved and so beautiful.’
Both girls were also organ donors. Brian says they made that decision in order to ‘help other people’ in need. ‘I want people to know their story,’ the father added, ‘they were sweet and beautiful and just lovely.’
A funeral service is scheduled for Saturday, and the family is now raising funds to pay for the funeral expenses. As of Tuesday night, the fundraiser had raised $40,700 of an initial $10,000 goal.
