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 ||||| 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.
– 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.