Stuck for 4 days: Miracle woman found alive after crash
Published: October 6, 2005
A woman trapped in a car for four days with two dead companions owes her life to a stroke of luck.
The 46-year-old was discovered on Wednesday night, trapped in a mangled wreck off State Highway Five between Napier and Taupo. Nestled among bramble bushes the car was well hidden from the road.
A truck driver discovered the car when he stopped to help out another driver whose truck had broken down.
“I just heard a moan…sounded like a cattle beast from down the paddock next door and that’s what we thought it may have been…and I thought, no, it’s coming from the car I’ll have to check anyway,” says truck driver Ross Hedley.
He scrambled down the bank and found the car hidden in bushes about 10 metres down a bank.
“I found a hand just poking out of the door…and a plea for help and I just went to the rescue straight away,” says Hedley.
Once the woman was rescued the bodies of her two companions, her only company since Sunday, were taken from the car.
Local rescue helicopter pilot Brent Williams airlifted the woman to Hastings Hospital with serious hypothermia, fractures and burns. She is now listed in a stable condition.
Williams says she was extremely lucky the truck stopped right beside the crash scene as she probably would not have survived another night.
A farmer who also assisted at the scene of the accident says the woman was lucky to be found at all.
Chris Haldane lives close to where the 46-year-old was discovered. He took water to the woman and tried unsuccessfully to free her from the upturned wreck, before emergency services arrived.
He says the car wasn’t far off the road, but was completely hidden in the undergrowth and it was very fortunate the truck driver happened to stop at the spot.
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