North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Locates Missing Elderly Woman Stranded During Winter Storm
What to Know
- The woman’s vehicle slid into a ditch on Green Tree Road during a winter storm, leaving her stranded overnight.
- Trooper K.T. Underwood located her after a thorough search, navigating hazardous icy roads to reach her.
- She was found cold, fatigued, and without her cellular phone, but was stabilized and transported back to Virginia.
CASWELL COUNTY, N.C. -- A North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper located an 81-year-old Virginia woman who had been reported missing after her vehicle slid off an icy roadway during a winter storm in Caswell County.
Trooper K.T. Underwood was dispatched to Green Tree Road in Caswell County after OnStar reported a vehicle in a ditch on Jan. 25 at approximately 7:40 a.m., according to a news release.
Snow and icy conditions significantly impacted travel throughout the region, and Underwood navigated hazardous roadways to reach the area. Due to the road layout, the trooper had to turn around inside Virginia to access the North Carolina portion of Green Tree Road, which is a dead-end road.
After initially searching the area and finding no visible vehicle or tire tracks in the snow, Underwood continued to circulate the roadway. The lack of tracks raised concern that the vehicle may have been stranded overnight.
At approximately 9:00 a.m., Underwood located the vehicle off the left shoulder of the road near the dead end. The vehicle had traveled approximately 70 to 75 feet down a steep embankment, was covered in snow and ice, and was not visible from the highway. As Underwood approached on foot, he heard an OnStar operator communicating with an occupant inside the vehicle.
Underwood made contact with the driver, identified as an 81-year-old woman from Danville, Virginia. The woman said she became lost the previous evening after purchasing groceries and pulled over to enter her home address into her vehicle’s GPS. While stopped, her vehicle slid off the icy roadway and into the embankment.
The woman, who was fatigued and cold, was moved to Underwood’s patrol vehicle for warmth. While confirming her identity, the State Highway Patrol Communications Center advised that the woman and her vehicle had been reported missing the previous day by the Pittsylvania County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia.
According to the woman, she had left her cellular phone at home. Although her vehicle was equipped with OnStar, she did not have an active subscription. She said she attempted to free the vehicle until it ran out of fuel at approximately 10:00 p.m. She then repeatedly pressed the OnStar button until she reached an operator.
The woman remained in the vehicle overnight as temperatures dropped into the lower teens. She was later evaluated by emergency responders and declined hospital transport. Deputies from Virginia transported her back to Danville, where she was reunited with her family.