Woman discovered husband had died after phone app sent her an alert
A woman has revealed how she received the tragic news of her husband's death from a surprise phone notification.
Back in 2022, Paula Overton had come home from work and drawn herself a bath before getting a message which changed her life forever and immediately sent her into panic.
Her husband Ben, who she'd married in 2019, was cycling home from work and had been involved in an accident, the severity of which Paula had no idea, as she'd only received a notification from a Garmin app connected to her husband's watch, which let her know about the incident.
A Garmin smartwatch will send your name and location to designated emergency contacts if it detects a significant impact or sudden movement.
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She immediately feared the worst and called 999 and sadly her worst fears were confirmed when police showed up at her door an hour later to confirm that Ben, who was just 29, had passed away after being killed in a head-on collision with a car while on a country road near Crawley.
Paula said: “It was just normal day. Ben gave me a kiss on the forehead and went off to work. He messaged me during the day to let me know that he'd booked some annual leave around my birthday, so that we could go to Cyprus.
“I would finish work and get home before him, so I went for a bath. I was laid in the bath, when my phone went. It was this automated message that said, ‘Benjamin Overton's Garmin device has detected an incident’. Then it gave me the coordinates.
“I thought it was a really weird message to receive so I decided to check a tracking app we had for each other called Life 360.
“I would sometimes check it so I knew where he was on his way home, and I could have dinner ready for when he got in - but also for safety reasons as well.
“Normally it showed a map, and it had a little pinpoint where Ben was. I expected that pinpoint to be moving along, but it was just stationary in the middle of the road.
“Every possible scenario started running through my mind, I thought his phone could have fallen out his pocket or he could have been in an accident. I got out of the bath, wrote down the coordinates and I called 999, I was just so scared.
“I had no idea what to think. I was just pacing around the flat waiting to hear and then they called back 10 minutes later and said ‘we can confirm that there has been an accident’. I asked ‘is he alive’? And they said ‘we don't have that information at the moment’.
“About an hour later a policeman turned up at my door, and I just knew it wasn't good news. I said ‘he's dead, isn't he?’ And he just gave me a hug.”
Over the past four years, the 32-year-old has learned very little about what led to her husband's death, with his inquest only permitted to take place in February 2026 after police and CPS decided there wasn't sufficient evidence to prosecute the driver.
That was little solace to Paula however who suggests that her husband was clearly on the right side of the road and despite the CPS dropping the case, she worked with a solicitors who was able to agree on partial liability with the driver's insurers.
She concluded: “Hearing that they had admitted partial liability allowed me to move on in some ways. I think I had the closure that I needed because in my heart, I had gathered what had happened."
James Moorhouse