Lincoln County Sheriff's Department
At 3:30 PM on Thursday, the Lincoln County Dispatch received a phone call from Ashley Harvey. She advised that she had driven into the canal and was floating down the canal with her son. She said that they were setting on the roof of the car and the car was sinking. She told dispatch that she was near the intersection of Wagon Trail Road and NPPD Canal Road.
Dispatch quickly notified the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the State Patrol, EMS, the North Platte Dive Team and the Sutherland Dive Team. She said that her husband, Dillon had just arrived. Dispatch lost contact with her.
When deputies arrived, they found Ashley and her son standing on Canal Road, adjacent to the canal. Sgt Hanna helped Dillon care for them until EMS arrived to check them out medically. As a result of the investigation, it was determined that Ashley had taken her son for a ride in the car in an attempt to get him to sleep. They had both been awake since 3 AM because the child was having difficulty sleeping. Ashley said that she must have fallen asleep.
When she woke up her vehicle was going down the very steep bank into the canal. She quickly went to the back seat where her son was. She had a glass breaker and her cell phone in her purse. She broke out the back window with the glass breaker and was able to get her son and her purse onto the roof of the vehicle. While floating down the canal she was able to call 911. At the same time, Dillon was receiving notification from the vehicle that it had been involved in a crash.
The notification also pinpointed the location of the crash, so he was the first to the scene because they live a short distance away from the accident. He reported that as the vehicle was going fully under the water his wife leaped toward the bank as hard as she could and then was able to swim close enough to the bank that he could reach them both and pull them from the current.
Both victims were examined by EMS. It was determined that the only injury to either of them was a scratch on the boy’s forehead. The dive teams worked with Al’s Towing of Hershey to remove the GMC Terrain from the canal. The location of the accident is 7 miles west and 3 miles south of North Platte.
