2007 V8 transmission failure

Hi everyone, first time poster and relatively new to the 4Runner space. My 2007 V8 limited has 160K on it. It’s not my daily driver and my daughter was driving it the other night when a coyote came out in front of her. She slammed the brakes and avoided hitting it. Issue is that the truck suddenly started clunking. She pulled over and called me. When I got there, truck would not hold in Park or drive forward in any gear. Got it towed and the output shaft between the transmission and transfer case snapped, metal in transmission and it was trashed. Anyone ever experience anything close to this??

 

Only thing I can think of causing this is she maybe hit the gear shift when she slammed on the brakes, causing the transmission to eat itself. She might not have even realized it happened.

 

I could be wrong but, I thought there was some sort of safety mechanism to prevent something like that from happening? Anyway, that sucks, sorry to hear it. Next time, tell her to run over that sob.

 

I’d guess it was an Act of God or somehow the transmission was teetering already.

The transmissions are definitely idiot-proofed to an extent though, Garage 54 had to remove a bunch of sensors before the computer would allow a shift into reverse at a speed higher than… maybe 5 mph? in a RAV4 older than this.