Woman trapped in car with bodies for 4 nights

The mangled car was concealed behind blackberry bushes. John Cowpland / Getty Images

A truck driver who thought he heard a cow moaning down a steep bank last night found the wreckage of a car containing two bodies - and an injured woman who had survived inside for four nights.

The 46-year-old woman was in Hawkes Bay Regional Hospital last night with serious injuries, but was coherent enough to tell her rescuers about her ordeal as she was pulled to safety.
She told them she was in a car that crashed off the State Highway 5 Napier-Taupo highway, halfway between Te Pohue and the Mohaka Bridge, early on Sunday.

She was found by chance last evening when Ross Hedley stopped to put out a fire on a truck he was leading in a pilot vehicle.

After extinguishing the blaze he turned and looked down the bank, where he saw the car 15 metres down.

"I didn't know anyone was alive. I heard a noise that sounded like a cattle beast, but I thought I'd check out the car anyway.

"I went down and had a look and there was somebody in there al right.

"The car was upside down and all crushed and there was a hand poking out of the side door and she was talking to me. I asked her her name and I asked her if she was in pain and she said no.

"I asked her who was driving and she said a male driver but she was the only one alive."

Mr Hedley said he raced back up the hill, called 111 and then returned to the woman.

He held her hand and tried to comfort her until help arrived.

"That's all I could see, a hand - I couldn't see anything else. It was crushed under the car."

Mr Hedley said he was no hero and instead praised the woman's strength in surviving such a horrific ordeal.

"I just did what I had to do ... I'm just glad she is alive. To go to something like that and find there's somebody still alive is incredible. Basically she just fought for survival, she stayed there and did it. She's an incredible woman."

Mr Hedley said he hoped he would be able to meet the woman in the next few days to see how she was doing.

Farmer Chris Haldane was alerted to the crash when his friend Brian Kelsey knocked on his door about 5.15pm and told him of the woman survivor in the wreckage.

"He said she badly needed some water, so I fished around to get a container, and he rushed it back up."

Mr Haldane followed him on his four-wheel motorbike, then returned to get a bar to free the trapped woman.

With passers-by who had stopped to help, the group tried to rip off the side of the car.

"But we couldn't budge it," Mr Haldane said.

"We were all talking to her, offering her everything, she had a damn good drink. She couldn't talk much. It's just so awful, there she was lying there for three or four days." Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter pilot Brent Williams, who took the woman to hospital, said: "She is very lucky that that truck broke down because I don't think that she would have lasted another night."

The woman was admitted to Hawkes Bay Regional Hospital suffering from hypothermia, face injuries and burns. She was in a serious condition but her injuries were not thought to be life-threatening.

"I gather that the male driver and the female passenger in the back must have died in the crash or fairly soon afterwards," Mr Williams said.

He was amazed at how "chirpy" the woman was during the flight to the hospital after everything she had been through: "She was stuck in there with two deceased people, which wouldn't have been very nice, and obviously had no water or anything."

None of the three names have been released.