Fishermen find man trapped for days in mangled truck under a bridge, Indiana police say
Two men scouting fishing locations in northwestern Indiana discovered a mangled truck under a bridge and a driver who was trapped inside it for nearly a week, police said.
Mario Garcia and Nivardo Delatorre said the glint of something shiny through the trees and their curiosity led them to the wreckage beneath Interstate 94.
“You could barely tell what it even was until he told me it was a truck,” Garcia said in a news briefing on Dec. 26.
“I looked inside and moved the white airbag and there was a body in there,” Garcia said.
“I went to touch it and he turned around,” Garcia added. “He was very happy to see us. I’ve never seen a relief like that.”
Garcia said the victim told him he had been there “for a while.”
Indiana State Police said the driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was pinned and could not reach his cellphone. They determined he had been trapped for six days.
“He tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him,” Garcia said.
The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department went to the scene, and after a “lengthy” process, they removed the man from the truck, police said in a Dec. 26 news release.
Reum was transported by helicopter to South Bend Memorial hospital with life-threatening injuries, according to police.
“The will to survive this crash was nothing short of extraordinary as it was also determined that Mr. Reum was able to drink rain water for hydration in order to survive for such a long period of time while being exposed to the elements,” police said.
Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield said the vehicle could not be seen from the highway above, likely the reason police had not received any reports of an accident.
“Quite frankly it’s a miracle that he’s alive. We’ve been lucky enough in this Christmas season that our temperatures have been above normal. That was working in this individual’s favor,” Fifield said.
Fifield described the possible series of events, stating that the vehicle may have been driving in the grassy shoulder of I-94 in Porter County, became airborne, rolled down an embankment and across a creek, and eventually landed underneath the bridge.
Other fishermen were in the area where Garcia and Delatorre found the wreck, but even they didn’t see it, Fifield said.
“I can’t explain it,” Fifield said.
Garcia praised Reum’s determination to remain alive.
“It looked like he was really fighting to be there, to stay around,” Garcia said. “He didn’t want to go.”
This story was originally published December 27, 2023 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Fishermen find man trapped for days in mangled truck under a bridge, Indiana police say."
