A mom of three tried screaming for help after she crashed her car in Newton County, Indiana, but passing cars couldn’t see or hear her. After spending six days trying to survive in a ditch, Brieonna Cassell, 41, thought she was going to die, ABC News reported. But on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, Brieonna was found alive in her wrecked car.
Per WLS, Johnny Martinez noticed Brieonna’s car while operating construction equipment in the area. He reached out to his supervisor, Jeremy Vanderwall, who is also a volunteer fire chief. When the two of them approached the car, they found Brieonna in it. Her family had been searching for her for nearly a week.
Jeremy Vanderwall told WLS that he couldn’t believe Brieonna had survived in the ditch for so long. But when they found Brieonna, she was “very conscious, very alert, very aware of how severe her injuries were,” Jeremy told ABC News.
Brieonna’s father, Delmar Caldwell, described the situation in more detail. He said that his daughter “fell asleep and veered off the road and went into a very big, deep ditch,” per WLS. She was injured and in pain, meaning she couldn’t move. To make a terrible situation even worse, her phone had died as well.
But the mom of three seemed determined to survive in spite of the numerous factors working against her. “She was using her hoodie and ringing it to get a drink of water, trying to survive,” her father said, according to WLS. Six days after the crash, his daughter had “had given up hope of being found” though, he told ABC News. That day, Jeremy and Johnny found her. Her father called it a “wonderful miracle.”
According to WLS, Brieonna is in the intensive care unit and will need surgery. But her father told ABC News that she is in “good spirits.”
