Two Women Trapped In Rolled Vehicle For Hours That Wasn’t Found
A frightening situation for two women involved in a crash that were trapped early Monday morning in a secluded area near Cline Ave in Gary.
Around 3:40 AM, Lake County 911 Call Takers received a call from a victim in a car crash that stated they had crashed near Cline Ave and were rolled over and trapped. The victim told the call taker they were on Industrial just west of Carmeuse where the road forks.
Dispatchers relayed that information to Gary Officers who responded to the reported Impala crashed. Shortly after at 3:42 AM the victims phone disconnected from the call taker.
Gary Officers arriving in the area around 4:10 AM could not locate the vehicle. Lake County 911 was still using Rapid SOS location technology pin pointing the vehicle in the area the victim reported, according to Lake County 911 Director Mark Swiderski. The victim had since reconnected with 911 and was still advising the call taker of where they were by before the crash.
At 5 AM East Chicago Police were then dispatched to check their side to be on the safe side and that there wasn’t an error with locations. East Chicago Officers went out but couldn’t locate the car on their side but access to the Gary side was flooded with water and had dispatch advise Gary of that.
Dispatch attempted to see if Lake County Sheriff’s Department Aviation was available for a search but found out they were grounded because of the weather conditions. OnStar was contacted as well but told dispatch they couldn’t release information because it wasn’t activated. Dispatchers were able to contact Hobart Fire Department to be enroute with their drone team.
Meanwhile the two occupants had now been trapped for a couple hours in the cold weather with a brutal cold wind and the passenger was getting upset. Around 6:40 AM the female passenger was able to free herself from the wreckage. She climbed up from the ditch and found a passerby headed to work.
The passerby now identified as Greg Zellers, was just heading into work like any other day, he told RNS. As he turned off the ramp about to turn onto Carmeuse Drive a young women approached him asking if he could call 911. The female who seemed very shook up said she needed to give 911 an exact location to where an accident took place hours ago and the driver was still trapped.
At first Zellers said he couldn’t see any vehicle in sight so he asked the female to show him where it was at. The Impala was turned upside down in what appeared to be a large hole or a ditch, Zellers told RNS. Zellers was already on the line with 911 and gave them his location. Dispatch told Zellers that they had been looking for them for hours.
Around the same time an off duty Lake County Sheriff Officer who was monitoring the situation, while thinking of the Matt Reum situation in Portage last week, decided to go the extra mile and take an extra look. That’s when himself and the Gary Officer located Zellers and the female passenger of the crashed car.
Gary Fire Department was dispatched to the scene to extricate the driver who was still trapped shortly before 7 AM. The occupant was airlifted to a Chicago hospital for treatment. When she was found the victim stated she could not feel her legs. Her current status is not known.
“I would like to convey my sincere appreciation for the passerby and two officers who found the car and all first responders involved in this rescue. Their diligence helped to prevent what could have been a tragedy,” Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez said.
Gary Police were not immediately available for comment. Check back for updates.
