A man was saved following a nearly week-long search after he crashed his truck in what many are describing as a miracle. The Indiana man spent six days in his wrecked vehicle before the wreckage was finally discovered by two fishermen who were passing by. Rescue attempts were successful, and the man made it out of the ordeal alive.
The fisherman spotted the truck while they were on the water, seeing an overturned vehicle under an overpass next to Highway 94 in Portage, Indiana. Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia were walking along the river on the way to the place where they would settle down to fish when they saved the day.
According to Fox News Digital, they thought that the occupants of the vehicle were already dead until one of the fishermen touched the driver and realized that he was still living. The driver of the vehicle quickly turned his head and spoke as if he had seen the first glimmer of hope since his accident nearly a week prior to being found.
Speaking about the interaction that they had with the driver and the intense surprise that the pair felt when finding that he was still alive, Mario Garcia said, “I went to touch it, and he turned around. And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”
Garcia must have felt an incredible jolt of fear when discovering that the corpse that he thought he had found was not a corpse. He did not dwell on the feeling of shock for too long, however, as he quickly sprang to action to get first responders on the scene to apply aid and evacuate the driver.
Garcia continued, “He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that. He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.” The harrowing scene somehow led to what many are calling “a miracle.”
After 911 was called, it took only a few minutes on Tuesday afternoon for emergency personnel to get to the scene and begin solving the situation. It took several hours to get the heavy machinery needed to cut 27-year-old Matthew Reum out of the car and into a place to move him somewhere that he could be rushed to a hospital.
Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield said, “They had a very difficult time getting down into the creek area with their equipment basically to cut him out and remove him… Quite frankly, it’s a miracle that he’s alive. In this weather, we’ve been lucky enough here this Christmas season, that our temperatures have been, as you all know, above normal. So that was working in this individual’s favor. Last year we had freezing cold.”
This miraculous recover took the efforts of two good Samaritans who were passing by and decided that it was right to check inside the vehicle. That happenstance saved the man’s life and led to a nationwide story of miraculous toughness and grit to survive so long in the vehicle.
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