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The Crash The Rescue A Pulse The Revival The Faith The Aftermath 27 Minutes Chapter 1: The Crash Time can be the difference between life and death on Canada’s busiest highway. Ashlyn Krell found that out last February. So did the people who saved her life. This is the story of the people who are among the best of us, the emergency responders and medical practitioners who devote their lives to saving others. It’s a story about the science that gives knowledge and faith that gives hope. And this is about Ashlyn – and her journey back to life. By Jane Sims THE LONDON FREE PRESS 27 Minutes VIDEO: A Cold, Cold Night Part one: OPP officers respond to a call along Highway 401 and find a car submerged in a water-filled hole. Ashlyn Krell died. There’s no question that for at least 27 minutes last February, along a stretch of the Highway 401, she drowned. You wouldn’t know it, save for the small, pinkish tracheotomy scar at her neckline from her four weeks in a London hospital. Otherwise, she’s still the same Ashlyn — a happy, loving, caring woman eager to enjoy every day and see what there is,” she said with a ready smile and bright, dancing eyes. Clearly, she’s not another grim traffic statistic claimed by Canada’s busiest highway. And as for that crash, which has now opened a path of infinite possibilities, Ashlyn doesn’t remember much — really, any — of it. She doesn’t remember the skid off the icy road east of the Veterans Memorial Parkway overpass and her little blue car’s quick descent into the ditch. Gone is the violent crash on the driver’s side into the exposed extension of a concrete culvert. The car flipping over into the deep construction hole filled with water. Hanging upside down in her seatbelt. Cold water filling up the inside of the car. Darkness. People yelling at her to hang on. The last things Ashlyn remembers on Feb. 12, 2017, are chocolates. At first, she wasn’t sure why they flashed into her memory bank. Later, she remembered she’d bought them at the Lindt chocolate store in Cambridge earlier that day as a gift for her younger brothers for Valentine’s Day, That’s pretty much the last thing I remember,” she said, her husband, Brayden Krell, sitting beside her on the sofa in the living room of their cozy London apartment. She was so close to not being here. An incredible constellation of quick thinking, medical expertise and determination saved her life. The stubborn first-responders who used their collective strength and kept hope alive. The first-class medical staff and facility ready to take on the challenges of her case. The stranger who dangerously stopped in the dark along the busy highway, but who did everything right after that to make sure Ashlyn’s rescuers would find her. The love and support of a Christian family that never lost faith in her recovery. For some months, The London Free Press has been re-constructing how Ashlyn was able to survive a harrowing night on Southwestern Ontario roads and a lengthy hypothermic submersion in icy water. Over the next several days you will meet Ashlyn and her family, along with the police officers, firefighters, paramedics, medical staff and others who gave her back her life. Ashlyn doesn’t remember what happened. But they do. Allison Krell MORRIS LAMONT / THE LONDON FREE PRESS Det. Peter Reintjes. MORRIS LAMONT / THE LONDON FREE PRESS It’s a hard taskmaster. It teaches you well, it teaches you hard. If you’re not careful, you’re going to be a victim of it.” Ask any police officer who has cut their teeth patrolling Canada’s busiest highway — speeders, impaired drivers, jackknifed trucks and ferocious, heartbreaking crashes are their bread-and-butter on the ribbon of road snaking across the province. The weather and the road conditions can change in what seems just a heartbeat. Feb. 12, 2017, was one of those nights that would teach them all a new lesson in courage. But it all started as a fairly routine night, save for the rain that was pelting down, when OPP Det. Peter Reintjes climbed into the marked SUV at the London detachment at 6 p.m. to begin his 12-hour Sunday night shift on patrol. This was a welcome change of pace. Sgt. Perry Graham, his longtime colleague and friend, had asked he and Const. Emad Haidar to shore up his and Rankin’s understaffed platoon for some extra coin. Reintjes, a 21-year OPP veteran and a decorated Canadian Armed Forces reservist, served Canada in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He jumped at the chance to step away from his normal duties on the drug squad to get back out on the road. Reintjes is an admitted adrenaline junkie. His work in uniform, both as a soldier and a cop, has taken him to some of the most dangerous situations imaginable in hot war zones and exposed him to some of the darkest tragedies on the beat. I’ve seen a lot of death — way more than anyone needs to,” he said. Like a lot of people in this business.” It had been a sloppy weather day when Reintjes got into the SUV, a bigger vehicle that could handle his bulky frame. Haidar, who worked with Reintjes on RIDE programs to check for drunk drivers on cold winter nights, had fired up a cruiser. The young father had been picking up as much overtime as he could swing, trying to get things taken care of” for his family. He wasn’t surprised that he and Reintjes has been tapped to help out. Not many people like standing out in the cold. Pete and I are always out there,” he said. Haidar is a contrast to the gung-ho Reintjes — quieter, introspective, a deeply faithful Muslim man — but like Reintjes, fearless when it comes to the worst of situations. By the end of the shift, the grizzled vet Reintjes would share a special bond with Haidar, Graham, Rankin and the rest of the platoon. But for that first hour, it looked like it was going to be just another typical night on the road. There was no forecast for the deteriorating weather conditions that would swoop in so quickly that night, said Rankin, For me . . . it was just going to be just another normal Sunday night.” Earlier that day, Ashlyn had kissed Brayden goodbye before heading to Waterloo to visit her two younger brothers at her parents’ house. Dustin, 23, and Dylan, 20, needed a home-cooked meal and a check-in from their big sister while they were on their own at home. Their parents, Gord and Sharon Skopnik, were in Uganda, near its border with South Sudan, working with war refugees as part of a Christian mission. This had been their way of life since the Skopniks both graduated from bible college. All four of their children were born overseas while they did their faith-driven work. Ashlyn’s sister, Alyssa, and her husband, Andrew Stapley, had begun their own missionary work in Botswana that same month. Box of chocolates With everyone overseas, the blue Toyota Corolla that was in dad’s name was lent to Ashlyn and Brayden for the year. It was a welcome addition to their lives in London. That Sunday, Ashlyn settled into the driver’s seat and headed east with plans to return to Brayden later that night. That evening, before leaving her brothers, she sent Brayden a text message at about 8:30 p.m. that she was on her way home. With that, she tucked the cellphone into a wallet and pushed it deep into her purse, part of her commitment to never let her cellphone distract her while driving. Without warning, at about 7:30 p.m., it felt as if the temperature had nose-dived. The wind picked up, making it feel colder than what the thermometer showed. A cold front turned the heavy rain that fell all day into ice and snow, most severely along the 15-kilometre Middlesex County snippet of Hwy. 401 on London’s outskirts from the Putnam Road to Wonderland Road cutoffs. Drivers heading into the area wouldn’t know what hit them when that curtain of precipitation — everything from rain, to snow, ice and fog — came down near the county line. All that weird weather swiftly turned the roadway, everyone said, into a skating rink. You could have measured...