Responders rescue woman from ravine

Members of the Nevada and Sheldon fire departments, joined by men who had just happened by, prepare to bring traffic accident victim Sheila Albert out a deep ravine 3 miles east of Sheldon off Highway B Tuesday afternoon. State Trooper Jim Wilde said Albert had veered off the road about 3 p.m. in her westbound 2005 Nissan Frontier pickup.

An alert passer-by's quick action saved the life of a 54-year-old woman trapped in a pickup that had run off Route B into a deep ravine three miles east of Sheldon Tuesday afternoon.

Complaining of injuries to her legs and forehead, Sheila K. Albert was airlifted about 4:30 p.m. to Freeman West Hospital in Joplin, where her condition was reported to be serious.

Sheldon Fire Chief Bill Jeffries said just after Albert had been extracted from her demolished pickup that the passer-by undoubtedly saved her life because darkness would have hidden the wreckage from traffic within a few hours and she would have succumbed during the night to her injuries and overnight temperatures in the mid-teens.

Declining to identify himself, the modest hero told the Daily Mail after going into the ravine to help Sheldon and Nevada firefighters lift the woman to the roadside that the accident must have just happened when he drove by about 3 p.m.; and through heavy brush he saw the dark pickup lying on its right side with the front end turned eastward.

"I didn't know if anybody was in it, so I went down and talked to her," said the robust stocking cap-wearing man. "She was hurting. Then I went up to the top of the hill (pointing west) and called 9-1-1."

Initial radio reports had said the pickup was on fire, but the man said there "was no fire."

Cpl. Jim Wilde of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said Albert, having recently moved to southwest Missouri from Apache Junction, Ariz., was westbound in her 2005 Nissan Frontier when she ran off the road on the left-hand curve, "went airborne" and traveled 430 feet before landing on a large flat rock 40 feet down. Wilde said Albert was wearing a seatbelt.

The firefighters cut the top off the pickup and peeled it back to reach Albert, then gingerly pulled her out of the cab and wrapped her onto a red plastic stretcher on which she was pulled feet first up the steep slope.

In the meantime, a St. John's hospital medivac helicopter had landed on the east hill above the deep gully in which the ravine opens on Route B's north side. The rescue team put Albert into a Vernon County Ambulance District ambulance and took her to the helicopter, where she groggily pleaded, "Please give me an aspirin and don't touch my legs!"