Man found alive days after truck crashed into creek is improving, hospital says
PORTAGE, Ind. (WISH) — The man found in a mangled truck that had crashed nearly a week earlier has improved to serious condition, the hospital reported Thursday.
Matthew Reum, 27, Mishawaka, was upgraded from critical condition, says an email to News 8 from Beacon Health System. Reum continued Thursday to recuperate at South Bend’s Memorial Hospital.
Two men scouting fishing locations on Tuesday afternoon found Reum in a mangled truck in a creek below an interstate bridge. Burns Harbor fire crews later rescued Reum from the mangled truck, and he was airlifted with severe life-threatening injuries to the hospital, an Indiana State Police spokesman said Tuesday night.
“One more day, and he probably wouldn’t have made it,” said Mario Garcia, of Hobart, one of the two men who found the man.
Garcia and Nivardo Delatorre, of Portage, found the man around 3:45 p.m. and called the Portage County dispatch center. The truck was under the Salt Creek bridge for I-94, about a mile east of the Portage exit, said Sgt. Glen Fifield of the state police. The bridge is in a wooded area between exits for U.S. 20 and State Road 249 in northwest Indiana.
A news release Wednesday night from a Beacon Health System spokeswoman said Reum hopes to eventually share his story. The release also said that Reum “has asked not only for time to process everything that he has endured since last Wednesday, but also for time to rest and heal. … He adds, ‘No matter how tough things get, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes in the least expected way.’”
(Provided Photos/Portage Fire Department)