TikToker Captures Car Driving on Frozen Canal and Falling Through the Ice

Canal Walk in downtown Indianapolis is a picturesque area that's wonderful for a stroll, run, dog walk, or people-watching during fairer weather. In the winter time, the canal can freeze due to the fact that Indiana can reach below-freezing temperatures.

An arctic freeze that dominated most of the country did affect Indianapolis, however, rendering the city more frigid than usual, freezing large portions of the canal. In the black of night, if one didn't know any better it could look like a road.

This is, save for the fact that the canal isn't accessible to normal road traffic, meaning that anyone who would try to get a car down onto it would have to go through a lot of work and break a lot of road rules to accomplish that feat.

This is exactly what this driver had to have done in order to get their vehicle on the ice, and a TikToker who was out on Canal Walk captured it on camera.

User Rachel Bowling (@rachelbowling2) posted a now viral clip on the popular social media platform of a black sedan driving on the canal as their friends ice skated on the canal. They get out of the way of the vehicle as the onlookers ask, "Do you think he knows it's thawed down there?"

At the end of the clip it cuts to a photo of the car submerged underwater with Rachel looking into the camera and saying, "they did not know that it was thawed."

The video was stitched with another clip from TikToker @tinisha.xoxo "This lady really thought she was driving on a road." Tinisha also posts another angle of the car under water.

Several TikTokers commented that they thought it was a road just from watching the video, however, Indianapolis residents and folks who have walked the canal remarked that there's no way to normally reach the canal through a vehicle. Others wanted to see what the body of water looks like during the day, and Tinisha obliged.

In the follow-up clip she points to green-screen photos that were taken of Canal Walk in the summer time, adding, "the man road does not connect to this. She had to drive onto a sidewalk over a hill to get there. You would not confuse this for a road."

To further drive her point home, she uploaded yet another clip of her at a park near the canal in response to another user who asked, "the real question is how did she drive onto it?"

Tinisha speaks into the camera saying, "Y'all got me out here feeling like a news reporter...this lady drove from this parking lot up here over the hill, over this [she shows a large curb that separates the hill from the walkway, which is well over a foot of ground clearance] and then this is the canal she drove her way onto, and then headed north."

She continues, showing off more of the canal, "And after driving all the way down there she turned around and this is where the lights were in the video and headed that way. So yeah, that's the street, up top guys. She drove under the street all the way down here and then fell in where the ice breaks off over there."

ABC Chicago reported that the incident occurred on Christmas Day 2022. Rachel Bowling, who initially recorded the video with her friends who were ice skating, went to go and help the driver who fell into the ice. The report indicates that the person operating the vehicle was "intoxicated."