Mother killed in car accident was getting her life together

It was late Wednesday, when Jessica Rath drove from her home in Astoria, Oregon to Westport, Washington with her two little girls in the van to pick up her husband from a commercial fishing trip.

Keaton Huff last talked with his wife around midnight, when he informed her that his boat had changed course and would be going to Portland instead. She insisted she was okay driving there to meet him.

She never made it.

Huff posted on his Facebook page, “my wife n kids are missing” and asked anyone who knew where they might be to call.

Rath accidentally went off the road and crashed into a tree head-on, killing her and leaving her two daughters in an isolated area, surrounded by trees.

Alone.

Four-year-old Aryanna Rath injured her leg, but managed to pull her two-year-old sister Lylah out of the car. The toddler had leg and head injuries. The little girls covered themselves with a blanket as the temperature dropped to the 40s overnight.

They stayed near the wreckage between six and eight hours until someone remarkably found them around 8:00 Wednesday morning.

Mourning begins as Lylah recovers in a Portland hospital. Aryanna has been released and is with her dad.

Rath had problems in the past, but according to her husband’s Facebook page, she was getting her life back on track and the young family was happier than they’d ever been.

The crime blotter in the January 26 edition of The Longview Daily News indicates Rath was sentenced to 10 days in jail for heroin possession and third-degree theft.

On his public Facebook profile, Huff posted in December: I’m with my wife where I belong…from now on I will not tolerate anymore bad talk about her or judgmental comments…She is on the road to recovery and I am right by her side.

By LINDA THOMAS