An Indiana mother trapped for nearly six days in her crashed car survived by sucking water from a hoodie she was able to soak in a stream, authorities said Wednesday.
Brieonna Cassell, 41, was reported missing last Thursday when she didn’t return to her home in Wheatfield after visiting a friend.
Six days later, on Tuesday afternoon, equipment operator Johnny Martinez noticed her vehicle at the bottom of an embankment next to a road in Brook, Ind., and called his supervisor, the Newton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
That supervisor was Jeremy Vanderwall, who also happens to be a volunteer fire chief. Together the men found the badly injured Cassell inside her car and alerted first responders, who air-lifted her to a Chicago hospital.
Cassell had fallen asleep at the wheel, veered off the road and landed in a deep ditch, out of sight of passing motorists. She yelled and screamed, but nobody heard her. Her cellphone was out of reach and had lost power. Her family and volunteers were searching frantically to locate her.
As luck would have it, the mother of three was trapped near a stream and had a sweatshirt handy. That and her determination to live proved key to her survival.
“She would take her hoodie and toss it, like she’s fishing, and bring it back and suck on it to have water,” her father, Delmar Caldwell, told NBC Chicago.
Cassell suffered severe injuries to both legs, ribs and a wrist, her family told ABC News. She was in stable condition as of Wednesday and scheduled for surgery.
In an update shared with her mother’s permission, the sheriff’s office said there’s “some concern with the healing of her legs,” and while the outlook is good, “it will be a long road to recovery.”
With News Wire Services
