Jordan Landon, 9, is lucky to be alive. 
 
 For two days, the girl lay pinned by a seatbelt, trapped in a mangled car, flipped upside down, after a crash that killed her father, 39-year old Douglass Landon. 
 
 Police say the two likely crashed late Friday night, on their way home from a stop at a nearby convenience store in rural Craven County, N.C. Video surveillance from the store captured Landon hugging her father just minutes before their accident. 
 
 When the two did not arrive home, Jordan's mother, Claudette Leohmann, embarked on her own search on Saturday, but fell short after she crashed her own car less than 100 feet away from the accident site. 
 
 "I'm sure Jordan could hear the sirens and everything, and hear the police talking on the radio," Butch Morse, a friend of the family, told ABC News. "And she was sitting right there." 
 
 It was not until Sunday evening that a man walking along the road spotted the overturned 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo where Jordan laid alive in a ditch and called police. When rescuers arrived, they believed both father and daughter were dead, then Jordan made a sound and they realized she had survived. It took three fire and rescue teams over an hour to cut her out of the car. 
 
 Jordan told police she survived on pop tarts and Gatorade, occasionally crying out for help when she could muster the strength, but no one heard her screams. 
 
 "For a 9-year-old to do that it's pretty heroic. She was able to keep herself calm. The family member next to her is obviously deceased so that's a lot to deal with, plus being dark at night," said Sgt. David Clifton of the North Carolina Highway Patrol. 
 
 Investigators recovered the speedometer, stuck at 110 mph, and say speed was a factor in the crash. They do not believe alcohol was involved. 
 
 Jordan, who Clifton described as "very talkative" after rescuers were able to free her from the car, told her mother she does not remember her father speeding before the crash. 
 
 "I asked Jordan, 'Was Daddy driving fast?,'" Leohmann told ABC. "She said, 'No mommy, daddy wasn't driving fast.'" 
 
 During her two days trapped in the car, Jordan also had to endure bitter cold; overnight temperatures in the area fell below 30 degrees. 
 
 "She did have a coat so she was able to keep herself warm as best she could but it's still pretty traumatic for a 9-year old to go through," said Clifton. 
 
 Jordan suffered only non-life threatening injuries and is expected to make a full recovery. 
 
 ABC Affiliate WCTI contributed to this report. ||||| POSTED: 7:28 pm EST November 13, 2011 
 
 A car accident on Friday turned into a two-day battle for survival for a 9-year-old girl who was finally found just before 6 p.m. Sunday. 
 
 Highway Patrol said 9-year-old Jordan Landon and her father, Douglas Landon, were in a car accident on Highway 55 near Turkey Quarter Creek Road in Craven County Friday. Jordan was trapped inside the car, a 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and managed to survive on Pop-Tarts, water and Gatorade. Her father died in the wreck. 
 
 "She said she tried to dig her way out, but she couldn't," family friend Kevin Brinson said. 
 
 The struggle for survival for Jordan lasted until 5:45 p.m. Sunday when someone finally spotted the vehicle, which was far off the side of the road, about 48 hours after the wreck. Jordan was transported to Pitt County Memorial Hospital. Douglas Landon, the driver, was also removed from the car. 
 
 Troopers continued Tuesday to investigate the speed at which the car was traveling Friday night. Landon was driving over 100 mph, according to the investigating trooper. The girl's mother, Cissy Leohmann, however, said Doug would have never driven recklessly with his daughter in the car. 
 
 She maintains that the car was absolutely not traveling in excess of 100 mph as stated in the trooper's report. Instead, she believes a tire blew on the Monte Carlo. Leohmann thinks a half-dollar sized hole in the car's right rear wheel is evidence of a blowout; the tow operator who hauled the car out of the ditch says the hole could be evidence of such an incident. 
 
 Troopers, however, believe a mechanical failure was not involved. 
 
 Authorities believe he and the girl were coming home from a store in Jasper around 10 p.m. Friday when they got in the accident. Just before the wreck Sunday, the pair was seen at a Mini-Mart in Jasper, where they played scratch-off lottery tickets and bought snacks. 
 
 Leohmann filed a missing person report and went looking for Landon and her daughter Saturday. During that search, Leohmann herself got in a wreck on Highway 55, less than 100 feet from the car Jordan was trapped in. None of the rescuers reporting to Leohmann's wreck saw Doug Landon's car down the embankment. 
 
 "I'm sure Jordan could hear the sirens and everything and hear the police talking on the radio and nobody knew she was there," said Butch Morse, Doug's employer and friend. 
 
 Even in his final moments of life, family friends say Doug was trying to protect Jordan when the car crashed. 
 
 "He was curled up in a ball with his arm right across his chest and his other arm pushed out across Jordan. He was trying to hold her and trying to keep her protected, he was a good father," Brinson said. 
 
 Landon lived on the 100 block of Turkey Quarter Creek Road, near the scene of the accident. 
 
 --- 
 
 Comments ||||| (CNN) Lily wasn't moving when rescuers found her, hanging upside down in her mother's smashed car. It had flipped over into a frigid Utah river half a day before, and the baby was still strapped in her seat. 
 
 As Officer Jared Warner dashed with the 18-month-old in his arms to an ambulance, she was barely alive. But she's doing better, her family said Monday. 
 
 "Her improvement is astounding. Right now she's watching 'Dora (the Explorer)' and singing '(The) Wheels on the Bus' with Grandpa. She is smiling and laughing for family members. We're blown away by Lily's progress and so grateful to her rescuers," they said. 
 
 Lily's mother, Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck, died in the crash that had landed their car on its roof in the Spanish Fork River. She was 25 years old. 
 
 Lucky fishing trip 
 
 Lily might have died unseen with her mother, had a man not gone fishing in that particular spot Saturday. The angler waded into the river around noon, then noticed the car wheels-up in the water. 
 
 "Where the car was, you couldn't see it from the roadway," police Lt. Cory Slaymaker said. 
 
 The car was partly submerged in the frigid Spanish Fork River. 
 
 The fisherman called emergency dispatch. 
 
 Police and fire rescuers arrived and sprang into the water. The rest of what happened is now a frenetic blur for Officer Bryan DeWitt. "I don't remember doing anything but just doing it," he said. 
 
 The water was so cold that, when the rescue was over, seven of the men involved had to be treated for hypothermia. 
 
 They heaved the car onto its side and saw Groesbeck in the driver's seat. It was clear to them that she was dead. 
 
 Then they noticed the baby. "She was definitely unconscious and not responsive," Warner said. 
 
 But she was still alive, and rescuers were delighted to see it. 
 
 Trapped 14 hours 
 
 She was still strapped into her seat, where she may have been for 14 hours, if the wreck occurred when police believe it did. 
 
 The night before, a man living nearby heard a loud crash and stepped outside to check, but he saw nothing unusual, police said, and dismissed it. 
 
 That was at about 10:30 p.m. on Friday. Groesbeck's car had probably just struck a bridge embankment. 
 
 "The driver's side tire went up the cement barrier on the south end of the bridge, launching this woman and her baby into the freezing water," Slaymaker told CNN affiliate KUTV. 
 
 The angler came along around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, 14 hours later. 
 
 How did baby survive? 
 
 Groesbeck's death is tragic, but the survival of baby Lily is a story filled with hope. 
 
 Above all, said CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, the biggest factor was the car seat. 
 
 Lily was in the proper car seat and the seat appears to have been properly attached, Cohen said. 
 
 Even though the child was trapped and upside down, her body remained in the seat and above the frigid water. Doctors say that such low temperatures are dangerous, but would be even more so if the baby were wet. 
 
 Dry cold temperatures are more survivable than wet cold temperatures, Cohen said. 
 
 Another factor may have been that the girl, as a toddler, has baby fat. If she had been an infant, it might have been a different story, Cohen said. 
 
 It's a reminder that the human body is tough. Lily apparently survived for 14 hours in extreme cold, without food or drink. 
 
 Rescuers heard a voice 
 
 A mystery arose from the rescue: The police officers who entered the water say they heard a voice calling for help. 
 
 The mother was dead, but the officers said that they heard an adult's voice calling to them. 
 
 "The four of us heard a distinct voice coming from the car," Warner told CNN. "To me, it didn't sound like a child's voice." 
 
 The voice gave the rescuers a surge of adrenaline needed to push the vehicle upright, he said. 
 
 The mother was dead. The child was unconscious, but her eyelids were fluttering, and the rescuers knew she was alive, Warner said. 
 
 It's one of those things that doesn't have an explanation, he said about the voice. 
 
 "It felt like I could hear someone telling me, 'I need help,'" DeWitt told CNN affiliate KSL. "It was very surreal, something that I felt like I could hear." 
 
 Tyler Beddoes, a third officer at the scene, said the same. 
 
 "All I know is that it was there, we all heard it, and that just helped us to push us harder, like I say, and do what we could to rescue anyone inside the car," he told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." 
 
 No skid marks 
 
 The river is 10 feet deep in some places, police said, but the car hit a shallower spot. Images showed it only partly covered by water. Lily was not submerged, said Police Lt. Matt Johnson. 
 
 Firefighter Paul Tomadakis freed her from the wreck. He "grabbed the baby in my arm, raised its head up out of water, as I tried to release the seat belt," he said. 
 
 Then Warner took Lily into his arms. 
 
 "The child was passed to me and I ran up and climbed into the ambulance with the child," he said. 
 
 Police have no explanation for the wreck. No alcohol or drugs were in play, they told KUTV. There were no skid marks leading up to the impact. 
 
 A tow truck hauled Groesbeck's car out of the river, and it will be inspected for possible mechanical failures.
– A truly astonishing tale of survival out of North Carolina: A 9-year-old girl managed to survive for more than 43 hours stuck upside down after the car her father was driving crashed. Jordan Landon was trapped by her seatbelt from about 10pm Friday until her Sunday night rescue, reports the Sun Journal. "She ate Pop Tarts and Gatorade while she waited for help," says a sergeant with the NC Highway Patrol. Her father, Douglas, 39, died from his injuries. "He was curled up in a ball with his arm right across his chest and his other arm pushed out across Jordan. He was trying to hold her and trying to keep her protected," says a family friend. Though alcohol is not currently suspected as a contributing factor, police recovered the speedometer, which was stuck at 110mph, reports ABC News. The car "ran off the road to the right and into a steep ditch bank. The car went airborne and was inverted as it hit a cluster of trees," the sergeant explained. A passerby happened to notice the 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo while out walking. Police initially believed Jordan was dead, until she managed to make a sound. The story's unbelievably bizarre twist: WCTI reports that Jordan's mother set out on Saturday to look for the pair—and crashed her own car 100 feet from where her daughter was pinned. She survived, but rescuers never spotted Landon's wreck.