Toddler improving after 14 hours in upside-down car in river

SALT LAKE CITY -- As four Utah police officers approached an overturned car discovered below a bridge in an icy river, they heard a woman's voice asking softly for help.

When the foursome flipped over the midsized car, they discovered a 25-year-old woman dead in the front seat. The only other passenger: an 18-month old baby girl in a back car seat, unconscious but alive.

A firefighter jumped into the river and cut the straps, freeing the blonde baby girl who was wearing only a flannel onesie and no hat or gloves.

Officers formed a line in the river and handed the cold girl to one another until she was on the shoreline and in emergency workers' arms. They rushed her to an ambulance and performed CPR, Spanish Fork Police Officer Tyler Beddoes said Monday, two days after the crash.

Lily Groesbeck is in stable condition and improving, hospital officials said. Beddoes, who spoke with the family, said the baby is opening her eyes and doing well.

Nobody knows exactly how the infant survived hanging upside down for nearly 14 hours in her car seat with no food or water. As she dangled, icy water rushed just below her head through broken car windows as the vehicle sat perched on the bank and rocks. The temperatures were near freezing throughout the night and through the morning.

"It's heartbreaking. Was she crying most the night?" said Beddoes, a 30-year-old father of two. "It's a miracle. ... She was needed for sure elsewhere."

And that voice? Beddoes said he and the three officers talked later and concurred they all heard the same thing. They can't explain it, but have no doubt they heard it.

"That's the part that really sends me for a whirl," Beddoes said. "I'm not really religious, but that's what you think of."

Police believe the accident occurred when the baby's mother, 25-year-old Lynn Groesbeck, struck a cement barrier on a bridge and careened into the river late Friday in Spanish Fork, about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City.