Texas Woman Survives Horrific Crash
Her vehicle wasn't spotted for about seven hours.
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An amazing rescue off of Transmountain Road in northeast El Paso on Sunday. El Paso County sheriff officials told KFOX the driver, a 71-year-old northeast woman, comes up to Transmountain Road often to see the sunrise. When she drove up Sunday morning, something went terribly wrong.
That was at 6 a.m. Nobody spotted her for more than seven hours until a woman driving on U.S. 54 saw something shimmering in the sunlight in a ravine off of Transmountain, and called it in.
"It was hard to tell whether someone was in the vehicle or not, I went ahead and requested our search and rescue," said Deputy Jesus Rodriguez, with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
When search and rescue showed up, they found the woman inside, and alive.
"She's conscious, alert, the only thing she stated was that she's thirsty," said Rodriguez.
As emergency personnel gave her fluids, a crowd of close to 100 gathered to watch the rescue.
"Looks like someone lost control and just came off the cliff. Hoping everyone is OK," said Eddie Caballero, from northeast El Paso.
"We see all these cars pullover, three fire trucks, ambulances everywhere, and now they're bringing down that stretcher," said Raul Serna, from the Lower Valley.
"We saw a lot of the crew here, and then we saw news crews, and so we thought it might be something serious," said Angela Rios, from northeast El Paso.
Rios' father is an El Paso firefighter, and described to KFOX the challenge of a rescue like this.
"It's very difficult, especially with the terrain, how it's really rugged, it's really, it's difficult especially trying to figure out how to get them out of the cars," said Rios.
Slowly the rescue team took her out of the ravine, and finally to safety.
For many the accident is a stark reminder of just how dangerous Transmountain Road really is.
"Especially with my kids, my family, I try, I try and slow down, just kind of drags you down," said Caballero.
"I just want to stress how dangerous it is driving through here and you do need to be careful," said Rios.
"Just hoping that people will learn that you know, you got to take your time going through this road here," said Serna.
Emergency crews took the woman to Thomason hospital with non-life threatening upper-body injuries. Officials told KFOX the cause of the accident was the woman lost her shoe, which got stuck underneath the brake pedal. She tried to avoid traffic, but in doing so she went over the side of the cliff.
