EXCLUSIVE: Grandfather Calls Toddler 'Hero' for Saving Infant Brother after Mother Killed in Wreck Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Video 
 
 OUACHITA COUNTY, Ark. - Along busy Highway 24 in Ouachita County, deputies say a wrecked car with a mother and her two small children inside went unnoticed for two days. 
 
 "She takes them everywhere she goes," says James Holliman. 
 
 James is in disbelief his daughter Lisa Holliman, 25, is dead. 
 
 "I'll never get up and see her, I'll never get to talk to her, laugh with her. My baby's gone," says Holliman. 
 
 It's what unfolded after the wreck deputies say is nothing short of a miracle. 
 
 "They went through a pure hell, no doubt," says Ouachita County Sheriff's Detective Lt. Nathan Greeley. 
 
 Holliman's three-year-old grandson Kylen managed to get out of his car seat, through the sunroof then up a small hill filled with bushes. 
 
 "When he climbed out of that car, seeing his mother dead like that like she was, he tried to wake his mom up," says Holliman. 
 
 Greeley says when they found the car, they found the boys' mother nearby and Kylen's one-year-old brother still fastened to his car seat. 
 
 "He was somewhat turned sideways, in a position upside down," says Greeley. 
 
 Investigators say it's by the grace of God the children survived not only the wreck, but made it two days without food or water. 
 
 "It was hard to see my grandson, you know, laying there like that... all cut up," says Holliman. 
 
 Holliman says losing his daughter may be the hardest thing he'll go through. He says it's even more difficult knowing his daughter was four weeks pregnant. 
 
 "We just found that out at the hospital that she was pregnant. We didn't know. We lost two," says Holliman. 
 
 Both boys suffered dehydration. 
 
 The one-year-old is recovering at Arkansas Children's Hospital and is expected to survive. 
 
 The cause of the wreck remains under investigation. ||||| (CNN) A 3-year-old boy and his 1-year-old brother were on their own -- possibly for as many as four days -- after surviving a single-vehicle crash that killed their mother in south Arkansas. 
 
 The older of the two boys was found Monday morning after authorities received a 911 call about a boy who was seen walking by himself in a rural area on a state highway near Camden, Arkansas, Ouachita County Detective Nathan Greeley told CNN. 
 
 The boy was covered in cuts and scrapes and appeared to have been outside for an extended period, Greeley said. 
 
 "You could tell he was extremely traumatized," Greeley said. 
 
 The 3-year-old boy who, along with his 1-year-old brother, survived a car crash that killed their mother in south Arkansas. 
 
 Officials gave the boy a bath, food and a change of clothes and distributed a description of him. A family member contacted the sheriff's office and told authorities that the boy's 1-year-old brother was likely nearby, Greeley said. The relative also said the children's mother had not been seen since going grocery shopping on Thursday. 
 
 Read More ||||| (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.
– "They went through a pure hell, no doubt," says an Arkansas sheriff's detective about the ordeal two small children somehow managed to survive—all thanks to the eldest of them, a 3-year-old named Kylen. The boy was found wandering alone on a state highway near Camden, Arkansas, on Monday, CNN reports. He was scraped up and "extremely traumatized," says Ouachita County Sheriff's Detective Lt. Nathan Greeley, per CNN. It was upon trying to reconnect the child with family that they learned his mother, Lisa Holliman, had last been seen going to the grocery store on Thursday; she also had a 1-year-old son. A search led to Holliman's overturned car in a ravine, apparently the result of a single-car crash and not visible from the road. The infant was found strapped in his car seat alive; Holliman, 25, had been ejected and was dead. "We're still trying to determine the timeline, but the mother was last seen Thursday," Greeley said. "This is one of the most remarkable things I've ever experienced in my 11 years at this department." Holliman's father, James, tells KARK that Kylen was able to unstrap himself and exit the car through the sunroof. "When he climbed out of that car, seeing his mother dead like that like she was, he tried to wake his mom up," he says. The boys survived without food and water; the temperatures were high and thunderstorms came through the area. "It's nothing short of a miracle," says Greeley. But still, a tragedy: Holliman's family learned she was four weeks pregnant at the time of her death. The crash remains under investigation.