Miracle Rescue: Searchers Find Woman 5 Days After Car Plunges Into Ravine

Mitchell Pennell was barely able to hold back his tears of joy, happiness and relief. He’d just found out he’d gotten his wife back almost a week after starting to accept she might be dead and that he might never know what happened to her.

Amber Pennell is just 21-years-old and the mother of two young children. So when she left her job at a restaurant in Caldwell County, North Carolina near Winston-Salem last Wednesday night, her family was expecting her home in time to kiss the kids goodnight. She stopped at a local Wal-Mart to buy a few items and was seen on security video there.

But after she left the store, she disappeared and her increasingly frantic husband joined rescue teams in an all out hunt for her.

For five long days, there was no sign of the missing woman. And then, late Monday night, they got the miracle some believed would never happen – a rescue worker spotted a glimpse of something white 70 feet down in the pit of a ravine.

On a hunch, he called Amber’s name. For a moment, there was silence. And then he got the response that changed everything. “When we hollered down at her, we saw her stick her head out, which was a blessing to all of us,” recalls Tommy Courtner.

Crews immediately converged on the area, bringing special equipment to cut her out of the car where her legs were pinned. They then gingerly transported the badly injured woman up the steep side of the ravine.

Her husband raced to the scene and was overcome with emotion, as he saw his wife for the first time since she vanished that night.

It had been five agonizing days for Mitchell Pennell and his family. He couldn’t hold back his tears as he exulted in the incredible rescue. “Just thank you Jesus!” he yelled, giving vent to a mixture of emotion and fatigue. “I knew my baby was alive!”

As for the rescuers who never gave up? “I love them so much,” he chokes. “They did the best job. They didn’t give up.”

There was applause among the crowd as the ambulance took Pannell away to hospital. Other relatives were overcome with relief. “We had a lot of praying going on,” one woman reveals. “A lot of praying. That’s what brought her back.”

There’s no word on what caused the accident but it’s a remote area filled with a lot of twists and turns that can be tough to navigate in the dark.

But while the victim is literally out of the woods, she’s still very much there in figurative terms. She remains in critical condition with numerous fractures, head injuries and suffering from dehydration and hypothermia.

But she’s alive and despite the long road to recovery from her long road home, her family thinks that’s enough for now.