Brieonna Cassell woke up in her Ford Taurus on Tuesday morning and began to lose hope that she’d ever get out of the car alive.
Nearly a week earlier, she had fallen asleep at the wheel while driving to her mother’s house and careened into a ditch. For six days, Ms. Cassell, a 41-year-old mother of three from Sheldon, Ill., had been trapped in the vehicle, battling for her life.
The accident shattered her left arm and legs and crushed the dashboard, pinning her lower body in place. Her cellphone flew under the passenger seat, just out of reach, and quickly ran out of battery.
“All she could do was move her arms, and one was broken,” her daughter, Alexis Cassell, said.
So there she remained in rural northwest Indiana, mere yards from a bridge that hundreds of cars passed over each day, all of them oblivious to the woman trapped just below them. She did whatever she could, according to interviews with friends, family and those who rescued her: She stabilized her injuries, sent out distress signals and kept her mind active, exhibiting a resourcefulness that surprised even those who knew her best.
“She said she just kept fighting, hoping somebody would find her,” her daughter said.
The First Few Days
Ms. Cassell crashed around midnight on March 5, and immediately began to scream for help from the darkness of the ditch. The road was mere yards away, but because her car was almost directly under a bridge, it would have been difficult for drivers to hear or see her, according to her family.
Her leg was bleeding heavily. In what was most likely the first of many moves that saved her life, she grabbed her belt and fastened a tourniquet, her mother, Kimberly Brown, said. As temperatures dropped below freezing overnight, she covered herself with a comforter that was in the back of her car — a gift she had recently purchased for a friend.
Her family realized the next day that she hadn’t returned home, and started to worry. When she didn’t respond to calls or texts from her children, they began to look for her.
The area where she crashed was mostly farmland, but the bridge was fairly busy, and around 400 hundred cars would have passed by Ms. Cassell every day, the Newton County Sheriff’s Office told local news outlets. To signal that she was in the car, Ms. Cassell used makeup to scribble the word “help” on her sun visor and driver’s side window.
By the weekend, the local sheriff had put out a missing person alert, and her family had contacted an independent rescue team in the area that deployed dogs and drones to assist in the search. The family followed up on tips that took them all over the county.
Aaron Cassell, her husband, also combed miles of farmland in the area. On Saturday afternoon, he came agonizingly close, he said. He was searching the Battleday Ditch, the same one Ms. Cassell was in, and came within a mile of her car.
She later told him that she could hear his voice calling out her name.
The Long Wait
As the days passed, Ms. Cassell grew increasingly thirsty, later telling a friend that her tongue felt like “a lizard” and that her lips were constantly chapped.
She knew she could survive for a while without food, but only a few days without water. There was a shallow creek near her car, but even if she opened the door and stretched out her hand, she was about three feet short of the water.
So she again got creative: She took her favorite sweater and unfurled it into the water, letting the pink fabric soak up the water before pulling it back and wringing it into her mouth. Her mother later dubbed it her “fishing pole” for liquid.
Days into the ordeal, Ms. Cassell accepted that she might lose her legs, her husband said. But she refused to lose her grip on reality.
“She said she’d empty out her purse and put everything back, then empty out her purse and put everything back in, just to keep her mind going,” Mr. Cassell said.
All the while, she wore her voice hoarse as she screamed at passing cars.
The Rescue
Jeremy Vanderwall, 44, a heavy machinery operator, was working on a drainage project outside nearby Brook, Ind., when one of his co-workers told him about a car that looked as if it had crashed in a ditch not too far away. Mr. Vanderwall, who is also a volunteer fire chief for Morocco, Ind., thought they should drive over and check it out.
When the two got to the bridge, Mr. Vanderwall couldn’t see the car and thought his co-worker was mistaken. But as he moved closer to the ditch’s edge, it came into view: a black Ford Taurus with its airbags blown out and its rear end sitting in a shallow creek.
“It looked like there was no one in it,” he said. “Next thing I know, I see a piece of white fabric moving, and I was like, Wait a minute.’”
“Whoa!” he yelled to his co-worker. “There’s somebody in there!”
Mr. Vanderwall approached Ms. Cassell, who he said was coherent and able to explain her injuries. Then he noticed dried blood on her forehead.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Wednesday,” she said.
“I said, ‘Nah, today is Tuesday, tomorrow is Wednesday,’” he said. “She looked me straight in the face, said her name and said, ‘I’ve been in this car since Wednesday.’”
She added: “I thought I was going to die here.”
Emergency medical workers arrived on the scene, cut Ms. Cassell out of the car and airlifted her to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill. She underwent three hours of surgery on Wednesday, and is now in stable condition, according to her family. She had several broken ribs and compound fractures in her left arm and legs, and it’s still too early to know if she will lose her legs, the family said.
Family members and friends, many of whom described Ms. Cassell as “strong willed,” “hard headed” and a “fighter,” are hoping that some of the grit that kept her alive during her harrowing week will aid in what will undoubtedly be a long recovery. That determination has already left an impression on her rescuer.
“How do you sit there for six days, and you hear the ‘thump thump’ of every set of tires going across that bridge, and not give up?” Mr. Vanderwall said. “Her will to live, man, that’s the most impressive.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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