Three New Jersey teens frantically used their cellphones to call for help from a sinking van after their troubled mother drove them into a river, their father said Thursday, according to the New York Daily News.
Police said Joann Smith tried to drown the three children, ages 13 to 15, according to the Daily News. She was charged with attempted murder and child endangerment and was being held on $600,000 bail.
A passer-by helped all four escape from the cold Delaware River in Florence Township, New Jersey, after one sibling kicked out a window, the Daily News reported.
"They did all the right things," Jeffrey Smith, the father, said, according to the Daily News. "I just thank God that they got out safely."
Jeffrey Smith said he received a call from his daughter around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after the car went off a boat ramp about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia, the Daily News reported. Smith said he was about 15 miles away running an errand with the couple's eldest son when he got the call.
About the same time, township resident Darnell Taylor said he and his wife were driving by the boat ramp when he noticed the partially submerged van in the river, according to the Daily News.
"I took off my jacket, jumped in and swam out there," Taylor told NBC Philadelphia, the Daily News reported. He told the teens to kick out the window of the minivan so she and her three teens, a daughter and two sons, ages 13, 14 and 15, could escape to the shoreline while his wife called 911, the television station reported
Jeffrey Smith said Thursday that his 49-year-old wife has been battling mental illness for more than a decade, the Daily News reported. Treatments have included hospitalizations and medications, he said, yet it's hard to determine "when things are going to go bad," but said he never anticipated a situation like this.
