Michigan state troopers successfully rescued two women and a boy from a remote wooded area after the three were lost while tubing on a river.
Jazman Hock, 28; Sarah Vida, 28; and Kayden Kovalcik, 9, were found safely on Friday after being stuck in the woods for three days, the Michigan State Police said on social media. Kayden is Ms. Vida’s son, according to The Associated Press.
The three were treated for dehydration, exhaustion, scrapes and cuts, then were released from the hospital by Tuesday, Michigan State Police Lt. Patrick Agema told NBC News.
The trio went tubing on the Muskegon River last week and were reported missing after the father of one of the women found her car unattended with a broken window at a boat launch 200 miles northwest of Detroit, the Michigan State Police said.
Authorities said the tubing trip went awry when the group encountered a logjam that popped its tubes. From there, the three proceeded on foot and subsisted over the days they were stranded by eating tree bark and flowers, according to AP.
“We could see in the middle of the logjam a path in the grass — the tubers came down some logs and went through water, then onto the riverbank and into the trees. We were able to see where they entered the woods and requested assistance once we located footprints in the mud,” Michigan Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer Cameron Wright said in a department post on social media.
Rescuers ultimately found them less than a mile from a second boat launch 10 miles downstream from the one where the woman’s car was found, the state police said.
Michigan State Trooper Zach Murphy, who participated in the rescue, told NBC News that “the thought that kept going through my head was I can’t believe that three people, allegedly in bathing suits, with no shoes on, were making the trek through that swamp,” adding that finding them was a “fourth-quarter, fourth-down, Hail Mary victory.”
