Two fishers discovered an Indiana man – alive – inside the wreckage of his car after it crashed on 20 December, leaving the man stuck for six days.
On Tuesday, Mario Garcia and his son-in-law Nivardo De La Torre had been looking for fishing holes when they discovered a vehicle in a shallow creek beneath an Interstate 94 bridge in Portage, Indiana, they said during a press conference on Tuesday evening.
After discovering the car, the men looked into the mangled truck and found a body.
“They touched the body, and the person turned their head and started talking to them. So, that got a little rise out of them,” Sgt Glen Fifield told the Associated Press.
The man, 27-year-old Matthew Reum, reportedly told the fishers that he had crashed his car days earlier, but was unable to get to his cellphone to call for help, according to CBS News. The outlet said he suffered “potentially life-threatening injuries” and had been taken to Memorial hospital in South Bend.
Fifield said medics from several fire departments worked to get Reum out of the car.
Police believed that Reum had been traveling westbound on Interstate 94 near mile marker 19 when his vehicle went off the road on 20 December, though it remains unclear why that happened.
“His vehicle missed that guardrail, so he’s driving on the grass shoulder before he goes airborne,” Fifield said, according to NBC News. “His vehicle goes down into the creek, where he rolls several times. It rolled underneath the bridge.”
Fifield also noted to the outlet that the weather was probably a huge factor in Reum’s survival for so many days. According to National Weather Service Data, temperatures reached 58F at multiple locations in Porter county on Monday.
“Quite frankly,” he said, “it’s a miracle he’s alive.”
The men who found Reum were probably the sole reason this situation ended the way it did.
“Had it not been for the two individuals that were walking the creek this afternoon,” state police said, “this incident more than likely would have had a different outcome. There had not been any prior reports of a crash in this area prior to the fishermen finding the vehicle.”
