A group of ice skaters captured the moment a car drove across a frozen canal in Indianapolis before tumbling in: 'She had no idea she wasn't on a road'

• A group of ice skaters captured the moment a car drove across a frozen Indianapolis canal.
• Videos show the car after it appeared to have tumbled into the freezing water.

On Monday, a TikTok video of a car driving across a frozen canal before tumbling into the water began to rack up millions of views.

In the clip, a group of people is shown skating across the ice. As they notice a car coming toward them, they step out of its way. "That's so ballsy," an onlooker can be heard saying.

As the car passes them and continues onward, the viewers appear to grow nervous.

"He knows it's thawed down there?" a voice asks.

The video cuts to an image of a car that had crashed through ice.

"They did not know that it was thawed," Rachel Bowling, the poster, says.

The video has since been viewed 13.1 million times and received 8,000 comments.

"Hey guys, watch where you drive, the driver said she had no idea she wasn't on a road," Bowling's video is captioned.

In a follow-up TikTok post Tuesday, Bowling responded to one comment asking her to elaborate on the incident.

"We saw her drive down across the parking lot, through the grass, down this very steep hill that goes across the sidewalk, and onto the canal — which is usually water," she says in the post. "And anyone from Indianapolis knows that that's water and that's not a place cars go."

"Once she started heading south," Bowling added, "we knew it was an issue because we knew that they pump the warm water in the south side of the canal."

Bowling said the group raced toward the car to help and that a man Bowling identified as Jacob jumped in and "tried to pull her out of her window," while another bystander jumped in to help retrieve both the driver and Jacob from the freezing water. Bowling said bystanders brought the woman into a nearby hotel to warm up.

"The dude that helped pull them out of the water invited Jacob up to their apartment, and got him dry clothes," Bowling adds. "And we gave our statements to the police. We were just in our socks because we took our skates off in a hurry."

"We watched them fish the car out of the canal," Bowling tells viewers, "after they checked it and made sure that there was no one else in there."

In a follow-up video on Wednesday that appears to show this moment, an onlooker describes the car as "just spinning like a disco ball" as it's lifted from the water.

"The fact the ice held the car though," one user commented on Bowling's third video of the incident.

"That's what we were saying! We were being so cautious on skates for no reason ," Bowling replied.

Later, Bowling showed viewers the path she believed the driver drove to the canal.

Bowling did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A tweet showing what appears to be another angle of the incident, posted by Mason Brauchla, also went viral, receiving over 180,000 views.

Brauchla spoke with San Francisco's KRON-TV, which reported that he lived right beside the canal. He told the outlet he caught the moment when he noticed headlights while taking out the trash.

"I couldn't even believe what I was seeing," Brauchla told the outlet. "I couldn't believe, first off, the ice was even supporting their car for that long. They were probably going 30 mph, at least. I was just shocked."

The Indianapolis CW affiliate outlet WISH-TV reported the fire department responded to reports of a car that was driven into a canal in downtown Indianapolis on Christmas, when the temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The outlet also reported a 33-year-old woman named Biankia Gleason had been arrested in connection with the event, suspected of driving under the influence, and told firefighters her GPS had taken her onto the canal.

Extreme weather spread across the US over the holiday weekend, in what has been called a "once-in-a-generation storm" by the National Weather Service. It resulted in at least 50 deaths and stranded thousands of travelers during the holiday rush.