PORTAGE, Ind. — It's a story of an amazing rescue in northern Indiana — a driver is alive thanks to the efforts of two fishermen who were in the right place at the right time Tuesday afternoon.
Indiana State Police said the discovery was made in Porter County around 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 26. Police confirmed the driver, 27-year-old Matthew Reum, of Mishawaka, was taken to a hospital in South Bend with life-threatening injuries.
It started Dec. 20, when Reum was driving a 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck westbound on I-94 when it went off the road. Investigators believe the truck went into the north ditch, missed a protective guardrail, overturned into the creek and stopped under the I-94 bridge.
Police said Reum was trapped in the truck and unable to call for help.
Tuesday afternoon, two fishermen were walking along Salt Creek, near Chesterton. They saw the crashed pickup and the man inside.
"He said to me that he's been there for a long time, that he had almost lost all hope because nobody was there. And one more day and something could have been very different here," said Mario Garcia, one of the men who found the wreckage. "But he was a young guy, you know, and it looked like he was really fighting to be there, to stay around. He didn't want to go."
It took first responders more than an hour to free Reum from the truck. Then, a medical helicopter flew him to South Bend.
Police said Reum drank rain water for hydration in order to survive while being exposed to the elements.
Porter County is roughly 155 miles northwest of downtown Indianapolis.