A woman spent six days in the Arizona desert after her vehicle veered off a highway and was rescued when road workers warned of a broken fence, officials said Wednesday.
The Department of Public Safety noted that two state transportation workers and a rancher were rounding up a bull on the other side of a fence along a road on October 18 in the town of Wickenburg, about an hour’s drive northwest Phoenix, when they noticed that the fence was damaged in an unusual way.
“I told them: ‘There is a trail of tires on the side of the road and it goes through the fence,'” Zach Moralez, highway operations technician, told The Associated Press. “I told them: ‘Let’s go to that hill, I’ll bet there’s a car down there.’
The three of them saw a wrecked car stuck in a mesquite tree, went to the foot of the hill and checked the vehicle. It was empty. No one responded to his screams, Moralez said.
An agent of the Department of Public Safety arrived and by then a maintenance team had come to the place. They all dispersed and Moralez said that his brother, the farmer, detected footprints.
The group followed the footsteps for about 457 meters (500 yards) and found a 53-year-old woman with severe dehydration and severe injuries in a dry river bed.
“He was in a fetal position and did not move,” Moralez said. “We started asking him many questions: ‘How long have you been here? Does something hurt?'”
Although the woman was a bit lethargic and achy, she was alert enough to open her eyes and answer the questions. According to Morales, the woman was dirty from having slept on the floor for a couple of days and had a facial trauma probably because of the accident.
Wanda De Jesus has lived in Orange County her whole life. Wanda has worked as a journalist for nearly a decade having contributed to several large publications including the Yahoo News and the Oakland Tribune. As a journalist for Oracle Savvy, Wanda covers national and international developments.
