VIDEO: An Indiana woman spoke for the first time Tuesday after surviving six days in a ditch following a car crash back in March. Brieonna Cassell, Brie for short, was found inside her car in Newton County, Indiana, on Tuesday, March 15 — six days after her family reported her missing.
Thirteen surgeries later, Cassell can show you the proof of every rod, plate, and pin put in her legs and arms. “The first like 11, I believe, were every other day once they started,” Cassell said. For the last three months, Cassell was at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois, recovering after her car crashed into a ditch.
“And then my car crunched like an accordion,” Cassell said. Cassell said she fell asleep behind the wheel on a rural Newton County road. Her legs were trapped in the car, and so she couldn’t move. “I was like, ‘Well, go to sleep — hopefully, somebody finds you,'” Cassell said. “Woke up in the morning, and I was still there, and I was all like, ‘Now I’ve got to figure out how to get out of here.'”
For six days, Cassell drank water from her cardigan, stayed warm from a mattress topper, and used a flashlight to try to get drivers’ attention. Meanwhile, her mom, Kim Brown, reported her missing. “I was just screaming to God, ‘Please let my baby come home,'” Brown said. “‘I don’t care how you bring her home. Just let her come home.'”
Brown’s prayers were answered when a man named Johnny Martinez — who was driving a 10-foot-tall tractor working for Deyoung Drainage on County Road 600S near County Road 300E near the Newton County Landfill — saw what turned out to be Cassell’s car crashed in a ditch by the side of the road. He contacted his supervisor, Morocco Fire Chief Jeremy Vanderwall, who came to Cassell’s rescue.
