Storm in Virginia, USA – He wanted to run home to his son in the snowstorm – 3 days later his body was found

The relatives of Jacob Whaley make the Louisa County police in Virginia serious allegations: If the officers had responded faster to their calls for help, the 34-year-old could still be alive today. Jacob Whaley froze to death in a snow storm on the US east coast while trying to reach his home near Lake Anna. Whaley wanted to see his two year old son.

A storm warning was received on January 3rd. The auto mechanic Whaley closed his shop a little earlier and got into his red SUV, a Dodge Durango. The doors and the window panes were covered with snow, he took a picture of it and posted it on Instagram. When he was about to drive off, he noticed that his boss’s car did not want to start anymore. So Whaley drove the man home first, then took the main road south again.

Less than seven kilometers from home, Whaley lost control of his vehicle. The SUV fell down an embankment, the wheels stuck in the mud. The 34-year-old also noticed that his gas tank was almost empty. Dressed in black work trousers and a gray fleece sweater, he got out; he would walk the distance. He was confident he could do it. He left his thick winter jacket on the passenger seat. A fatal mistake.

The weather conditions deteriorated rapidly, it got darker and in the snowstorm Whaley lost his orientation. At 8.46 p.m. he wrote his mother a message: “I’m lost.” When she called her son back, only the Combox came. At 9:12 p.m., the woman alerted the police. In a statement on Monday, the agency announced that officials had gone out 20 minutes after the mother’s emergency call to look for Whaley. Streets and side streets were checked and hospitals asked. A forest area was also searched, the police said.

According to the Washington Post, Whaley’s family nevertheless suspected that Jacob could have been found earlier if the sheriff’s offices in the region had not discussed who was responsible for the search for so long.

Jacob Whaley’s body was finally discovered on January 6th in a wooded area around 190 meters from a main road. He was three kilometers from his house.

The 34-year-old is arguably the only fatality in the heavy snow storm in Virginia, which even paralyzed car and truck traffic on a freeway for 24 hours. Numerous people were stuck in their vehicles on the dangerously icy I-95 Highway that day.

US Senator Tim Kaine, who wanted to drive back to Washington DC from his home state of Virginia, also got stuck in a traffic jam. “I started my usually two-hour drive to DC at 1pm yesterday. 19 hours later, I’m still not in the Capitol, ”Kaine wrote on Twitter. He later announced: “Update: I was on the road for 27 hours.”

The northeastern United States is currently battling the freezing cold and extremely low temperatures. In Boston, some schools closed or postponed their start due to the extreme cold on Tuesday.

Meteorologists expect maximum temperatures of around minus eleven degrees Celsius for Tuesday. However, since it is windy, it can feel like it is minus 22 degrees. It is extremely cold in other parts of the northeast as well. In the west of the state of Maine there are said to be wind-caused temperatures of up to minus 40 degrees.