Truck driver trapped in wreckage for days after crashing shocks rescuers

A man in his 20s was found alive after crashing his pickup truck below an underpass near Portage, Indiana (Picture: AP)

A truck driver who crashed and was trapped for six days in the wreckage surprised passersby who rescued him.

Two fishermen were scouting for spots to cast their reels when they saw a crashed pickup truck below an underpass not visible from Interstate 94 above. A man was inside.

‘They touched the body, and the person turned their head and started talking to them,’ said state police Sgt Glen Fifield. ‘So, that got a little rise out of them.’

The driver, in his 20s, managed to say that he was trapped since December 20 at the site near Portage, Indiana.

Police rescue a man after finding his damaged vehicle on December 26 along Interstate 94 near Portage, Indiana (Picture: AP)

Nivardo Delatorre, who was walking along Salt Creek with his father-in-law Mario Garcia on Tuesday, said, ‘We were put there for a reason.’

Garcia said: ‘He had a jacket almost like mine and all I seen was this part, the shoulder. The moment I touched the shoulder, he swung around. He woke up.’

Fifield called it ‘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,’ Fifield said. ‘So that was working in this individual’s favor.’

Police said the man who was rescued after being trapped for six days (Picture: AP)

In December, the average high temperature in Portage is 37 degrees Fahrenheit and the low is 22 degrees Fahrenheit.

Police said the driver drank rainwater to survive while he was pinned in the wreckage under the highway bridge.

The man was airlifted to a hospital in South Bend with life-threatening injuries, the sergeant said.

He had not been reported missing. His identity was not immediately released.

Portage is roughly 30 miles southeast of Chicago, Illinois.

The driver was rescued more than two-and-a-half years after a 90-year-old man drove off a cliff over Lake Erie in Ohio and was miraculously found alive. Police body camera footage showed them carefully extricating the elderly man from the vehicle that had landed on the driver’s side. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital close with non-life-threatening injuries and released after treatment.

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