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LITTLE COTTONWOOD CANYON -- The father of the 5 Browns struggled for nearly 40 minutes to relay his location to dispatchers after his vehicle plummeted off the road and into Little Cottonwood Creek on Feb. 14.
Recordings of a 911 call released Friday document a conversation between dispatchers and a woman talking on another phone with Keith Brown while he and wife Lisa were trapped in their Porsche in the creek.
The call reveals more about what happened in that crash, and about the difficult process to recover the couple.
Keith Brown had no idea where he was after his car took a dive off a ledge in Little Cottonwood Canyon on Valentine's Day.
Badly hurt and drifting in and out of consciousness, Brown was able to call a relative on a cell phone. That relative then called 911.
"They were coming down from Snowbird Ski Resort and then their car went off the road, and now they're in the river," the relative told a dispatcher.
The woman, believed to be Keith Brown's sister or sister-in-law, kept Brown on the phone and talking while dispatchers relayed clues about the couple's location to rescuers. The call was made about 10:40 p.m.
The woman had trouble giving dispatchers much description of where the vehicle had gone off the road.
"They were five or 10 minutes coming down the canyon from Snowbird," she said.
When the dispatcher asked, "Did he give you a mile marker or anything?", the relative answered, "No, he doesn't even remember where he ate."
It took rescue crews 40 minutes to find the Browns and their car.
At the instruction of dispatchers, the woman had Brown attempt to turn on the car's hazard lights and honk the horn, though neither were functioning. She also asked Brown to watch for lights, listen for sirens and yell for help.
"They're driving up and down the canyon trying to find you right now," she told Brown. "You have to somehow give them a signal where you are."
The woman said Brown was calling out, but he was trapped and in pain — and very cold.
"Keep yelling," she's heard telling Brown. "They've got to know that you're still there and that you're still alive."
About 25 minutes into the call, the woman reported that Brown had seen flashing red lights. He was unable to hear sirens, though, because of the noise of rushing water underneath the car.
"They've got ropes, and they're coming down," the woman reassured Brown.
About 35 minutes into the call, the woman said Brown could see people coming to his rescue.
After locating the vehicle and getting a triage team down the steep mountainside, it took rescuers about another hour to get the couple back up to the main road and into medical helicopters.
Brown's attorney has said the crash was accidental because Brown was driving too fast for conditions. Both Keith and Lisa Brown were taken to the hospital in critical condition.
During the 911 call, the woman told dispatchers Brown thinks "rocks in the road" contributed to the crash, though he wasn't sure.
The focus of the crash changed abruptly when KSL discovered Keith Brown was facing serious felony charges -- several days before the crash, prosecutors charged Brown for sexually abusing his three daughters in the 1990s.
In court last week, Brown -- who still had scratches on his face from the crash -- pleaded guilty to the charges as part of a plea deal.
A spokesman for The 5 Browns has said the three sisters are making tremendous progress in healing.
The 5 Browns are a classical piano-playing group consisting of five siblings. They were the first group of five siblings to attend Juilliard.
Keith Brown remains a free man until his sentencing March 31. He could go to prison for at least 10 years.
As for Keith's wife Lisa Brown, she was also badly hurt in the crash. KSL was not able to get an update on her condition.
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Story written with contributions from Sandra Yi and Jared Page.
