Crash Kills Mother, 3 Kids, cause unknown

the seeker

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http://www.ktvb.com/news/local/crash-reported-near-lucky-peak-resevoir/228115330?c=n

From the link above:

ADA COUNTY -- A woman and her three children were killed Thursday morning when an SUV crashed off of the cliff near Idaho 21 High Bridge over Lucky Peak, landing in the water below, according to the Ada County Sheriff's Office.....Deputies tell KTVB that those killed were a 40-year-old woman and her three children - a 12-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl...Sheriff's officials say there is no indication of braking before the SUV plummeted off the cliff. Witnesses reported seeing the driver accelerate as the SUV neared the edge.

I live right near there. I drive this every single day. Twice. My kids and I drove over the bridge while those kids and mother were in the water dying; we had no idea, it happened RIGHT before we got there and we passed the emergency vehicles on their way there.

I am really hoping that the mother did not do this on purpose, if she did, I guess this will be moving to the Crimes-Spotlight on Children Forum, lets hope that isn't the case.
 
At least someone was close enough to see vehicle go off the road & into the water. And reported it.
Otherwise, who knows how long it would have been before the wreckage and bodies were discovered?

Sad, sad, sad.

The dive team and other responders - what a difficult job.
 
I wonder if the mother had a seizure or medical condition causing them to go over the edge. This is simply tragic and my thoughts and prayers go out to their family and friends. It is hard to imagine a mother taking the lives of her children with her on purpose and I pray this was not the case.

So very sad indeed.
 
I wonder if the mother had a seizure or medical condition causing them to go over the edge. This is simply tragic and my thoughts and prayers go out to their family and friends. It is hard to imagine a mother taking the lives of her children with her on purpose and I pray this was not the case.

So very sad indeed.

My grandmother once passed out while driving. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, though she obviously ignored the red light since she was unconscious and hit another car. I don't even remember why she passed out, it was about ten years ago and she's never had anything like that ever again.

I guess my point was that one tiny moment of not feeling well can change everything. Maybe the woman passed out because her blood pressure was off, or she wasn't dehydrated or just stress - she did have three kids, can't be EASY - and that was all it took.

Whatever happened, this is a tragedy. I wish their family the best.
 
I live right near there. I drive this every single day. Twice. My kids and I drove over the bridge while those kids and mother were in the water dying; we had no idea, it happened RIGHT before we got there and we passed the emergency vehicles on their way there.

I am really hoping that the mother did not do this on purpose, if she did, I guess this will be moving to the Crimes-Spotlight on Children Forum, lets hope that isn't the case.

I had a look at what I think is the bridge in question on Google earth and followed the road back and forth across the river/lake using streetview. To be honest it's almost impossible to see how this could have been an accident, especially in view of a witness saying the car accelerated towards the edge of the cliff.
 
Coroner names mom, 3 kids killed when SUV plunged into Lucky Peak

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article81310057.html#storylink=cpy

Gwyneth Voermans, 8, Logan Voermans, 11, and Anika Voermans, 13, were all passengers inside the Land Rover that went off a cliff Thursday morning and into Lucky Peak Reservoir. All three died from drowning associated with blunt force trauma, according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office.

Ada County sheriff’s deputies say they don’t know why their mother — Noel Voermans, 40 — drove the SUV off the cliff. She died from drowning, the coroner’s office says.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article81310057.html#storylink=cpy
 

That is indeed the road bridge I was looking at. From what I could see, if she was driving in either direction along Idaho 21 and turned onto East Spring Shores Road she could only have driven over the cliff by driving round the barriers intended to prevent vehicles accidentally going into the water.

I'm afraid this looks more and more to me like suicide, though I would love to be proven wrong for the children's sake.
 
That is indeed the road bridge I was looking at. From what I could see, if she was driving in either direction along Idaho 21 and turned onto East Spring Shores Road she could only have driven over the cliff by driving round the barriers intended to prevent vehicles accidentally going into the water.

I'm afraid this looks more and more to me like suicide, though I would love to be proven wrong for the children's sake.

I agree that it looks suspicious, but I still believe there's a good chance it was an accident.

an SUV crashed off of the cliff near Idaho 21 High Bridge

Based on that, I checked and found this cliff near the bridge that doesn't seem all that protected:

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If she came from that way and something happened that made her lose consciousness, the car could've gone towards the cliff pretty easily.

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This now looks like a purposeful act doesn't it. I was so afraid this might be the case and I didn't want it to be... I now wonder if the mom wanted to end her own life, but couldn't imagine life without her children so she took them with her. How utterly tragic and I feel so badly for these girls, their father and their friends; Also for the mom's family and friends who will be left with self recrimination no doubt.

Thanks for the updates and sharing this with us.
 
WIth all the recalls on cars nowadays,could it have been something mechanical with steering or breaking?

Not impossible, obviously. I guess we'll need to wait for the investigator's report on the vehicle. AFAIK there have been no Land Rover recalls for steering issues. There have been one or two relating to the brakes but the last was over a year ago and I would expect all the affected vehicles would have been recalled by now and the defective parts replaced. Recalls do seem to affect specific models so without knowing the model and year of this vehicle there's no way of knowing whether it had been subject to recall for any faults.
 
Looking at this again on the ground:

If she was coming from the south, she'd have had to do a U-turn to drive over the cliff.

If she was coming from the north, she'd have had to cross the on-coming carriageway and drive round a concrete barrier to drive over the cliff.

If she was coming from the north and the vehicle simply went out ot control, she would have hit a barrier or the parapet of the bridge on the side of her direction of travel, but assuming those barriers held there's no reasonable way I can see that the vehicle could have ended up in the water. It's theoretically possible that she could have driven up and over the embankment and then behind the concrete barrier, but the window of opportunity for getting behind the concrete barrier on that side is very narrow indeed.
 
Looking like deliberate, no skid marks found -

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/article98183477.html

Sheriff’s investigators have done a thorough check of the vehicle’s repair history and looked for recalls.

“There was no documented issue with that for that vehicle,” Orr said.

Ada County Coroner Dotti Owens said there was no evidence in the autopsy of Bankhead that she suffered any sort of medical emergency before the crash.

A couple weeks after the fatal crash, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved a half-dozen boulders to the cliff area near where the vehicle crashed.
 
Thank you for the update.

This:

All died of drowning; the children also experienced blunt force trauma, according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office.

This update was back in August but I can't find anything more recent than it, so I wonder if they ever managed to get the data from the chip.

I assume the BFT was due either to them maybe not wearing seatbelts or to their mother knocking them out at some stage before she drove over the edge.

Either way, this really now looks like a rare case of mother as family annhilator.
 
Thank you for the update.

This:



This update was back in August but I can't find anything more recent than it, so I wonder if they ever managed to get the data from the chip.

I assume the BFT was due either to them maybe not wearing seatbelts or to their mother knocking them out at some stage before she drove over the edge.

Either way, this really now looks like a rare case of mother as family annhilator.

Very crazy to think this is murder by the mother.

There have been maternal familicide.

The Female Family Annihilator: An Exploratory Study
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1088767913513152

Familicide and The Family Annihilator
http://www.crimetraveller.org/2015/09/familicide-family-annihilator/

Examples Of Maternal Familicide
Stella Delores Almarez
Patricia Bolin
Susan Dianne Eubanks
Khoua Her
Raina Thaiday/Mersane Warria
Andrea Yates
 
Worst fears confirmed. From link above:

A Boise woman intentionally steered her SUV off a cliff into Lucky Peak last year, killing herself and her three children, Ada County Sheriff's Office investigators have found.

Witnesses to the crash said that Bankhead was driving north on Idaho 21 at about 7 a.m. when she slowed down, turned onto Spring Shores Road, pointed the SUV toward the cliff, and suddenly accelerated off the edge.

No skid marks or indication of braking was found. Investigators also found no evidence of mechanical problems with the SUV.

Bankhead's autopsy revealed that she had no alcohol or medication in her system at the time.

Investigators attempted to retrieve information from the Land Rover's water-damaged Event Data Recorder (EDR) - which measures things speed, braking, acceleration, and fault codes - but were unsuccessful, even though the sheriff's office twice sent the device to Land Rover’s European offices for analysis.

Terrible tragedy :(
 

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