‘It’s him. He died’: Woman accidentally live-tweets her husband’s car crash death after hearing about it on police radio

In a tragic series of events in the US, a woman from Vancouver has accidentally live-tweeted the death of her own husband while following news of a car crash on emergency scanners.

Caran Johnson, 40, is a so-called “scanner junky”, relaying information on Twitter which she overhears on publicly-available police radio frequencies, and last year was featured in a local newspaper interview speaking about her hobby.

At 1.41pm on Wednesday afternoon, a car drifted across the central reservation of local interstate highway 205 and crashed head-on into a pickup truck going in the opposite direction.

Ms Johnson, tweeting as @ScanCouver, started publishing information about the crash as she would any other – not realising that one of the drivers was her husband, 47-year-old Craig R Johnson.

Once the crash was initially reported by The Columbian, a local paper, Ms Johnson tweeted: “I hate that section of I205 S. Too many on ramps, speeders and too few lanes.”

At 2.01pm she commented that “this accident sounds horrible”, before relaying information she had heard from the scanners. She reported that: “LifeFlight (an emergency response helicopter) is standing down… They said they are so close to SWWMC (Southwest Washington Medical Centre), they can take the patient there, instead of Lifeflight.”

It then emerged that there had been one fatality in the crash, at which point Ms Johnson had a daunting realisation. At 2.17pm she tweeted: “I'm trying not to panic, but my husband left work early and he drives 205 to get home. He's not answering his phone.”

In a quick series of posts, she then documents her growing anguish for all her followers to read, adding: “and he’s late”… “I’m a basketcase”… “I just called his work and he was feeling faint when he left work”.

At 2.48pm Ms Johnson appeals to fellow users for advice, saying: “What do I do now? He might have pulled over because he was feeling faint and then passed out or had a seizure. He has epilepsy.”

She contacted a state patrol spokesman, Trooper Will Finn, and a photographer for The Columbian, Zachary Kaufman, who were both at the scene of the crash – but neither could supply details of the make of the car involved or the identity of the victims.

At 3.08pm she wrote: “I just called 911 and they transferred me after I gave them his license number and told me that they will call me back. wtf?”

“And now my kids are home from school,” she adds, before tweeting: “He’s the one I go to for things like this …”

Minutes later, she received confirmation of her husband’s death from a pair of state patrol sergeants, according to The Columbian.

At 3.50pm she tweeted: “it’s him. he died.”

In an interview with CNN, Trooper Finn revealed that he was aware of Ms Johnson from regular contact over Twitter, and that when she asked about her husband he “went into overdrive”.

“I may tweet something and she may tweet back. One night we exchanged a recipe for a low carb pizza, said Finn, who has never met Johnson in person.

When she contacted him this time, he said: “Immediately, I went into overdrive mode and I stopped tweeting the whole thing. I didn't want someone to find out over Twitter that their husband passed away. I didn't want her to find out that way. That is a hard thing to go through.”

Finn would normally tweet a photo of the crash scene, but said he didn’t in this case “just in case that was her husband”.

After she had found out the news, Finn said: “I feel terrible. I still feel terrible. Our hearts go out to the family. This person was a member of our community and we just lost him.”

Ms Johnson’s husband was the only fatality in the incident. The driver of the other car was taken to hospital with serious injuries, a broken femur and a collapsed lung, according to reports from CNN.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.