Woman Dies After Getting Trapped in Her Car During Blizzard

A woman was found dead after she got trapped inside her car for over 18 hours during the blizzard that impacted the Buffalo area of New York over the holiday weekend.

Anndel Taylor, 22, of Charlotte, a student nurse, was traveling home from her work in a Buffalo hospital when her car became stuck in the snow. As she got trapped in what Gov. Kathy Hochul has called “the blizzard of the century," the nurse sent a series of updates to her family in North Carolina — including chilling videos showing how she was trapped in her car in ever-rising snow, New York Post reported.

One video that was sent just before 4:15 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23 showed her windows completely covered in snow. After midnight on Christmas Eve, she sent a final video in which she rolled down her ice-covered window to show a nearby van stuck in the blinding blizzard with its emergency lights on.

“She had been talking to [her sisters], telling them that she’d called 911 and was scared,” Taylor’s mom, Wanda Brown Steele, 54, said.

However, the rescue people told her that the help was also getting stuck.

“I really didn’t know anything at first because my kids didn’t want me to worry at first. But then they showed me the video and I started acting on it,” she said.

In her final messages to her three sisters, Taylor said she planned to get some sleep while she waited for rescuers, then make a bid to escape on foot if help did not arrive. However, since “she didn’t answer her phone” by the next day morning, the family “tracked to her car,” People reported.

“If she was rescued, she knows my number — she would have called to make sure nobody was worried about her. And so at that point, we knew something was wrong,” her mom said.

She was found dead inside her car by a family member who bust open the car windows 24 hours after she was first known to have been trapped. Her death comes shortly before her 23rd birthday.

Taylor’s family believes that she likely died of carbon monoxide poisoning as snow covered her exhaust pipe while she slept with the engine running to stay warm.

However, even after Taylor’s body was found, the police didn’t get there until late Christmas Day afternoon and her body was left in her car for another 24 hours.

The family is trying to bring her body back to Charlotte.