A woman spent a night and the better part of the following day lying in the woods after crashing her vehicle off a gravel road and down an embankment this past weekend.
The 60-year-old woman was found by a Nanaimo RCMP officer who was sent to investigate Saturday at about 1:40 p.m. after a hiker noticed the Hyundai crossover-utility vehicle which had come to a stop in a wooded area along Harwood Drive in Lantzville.
“A lady was hiking Copley Ridge when she noticed a black Hyundai down the embankment behind the Lantzville Foothills [development] site office,” said Const. Gary O’Brien, Nanaimo RCMP spokesman. “The vehicle was 15 feet down the embankment. No one was in it.”
But when the officer went down to have a closer look he found the driver about 20 feet farther in some thick bush.
“She was able to answer some questions, but was incoherent,” O’Brien said.
Firefighters from Lantzville responded along with B.C. Ambulance Service.
The woman appeared to have minor injuries and was somewhat hypothermic from exposure. O’Brien said the constable who attended believe the vehicle and driver had been there since Friday night.
“Copley Ridge is a popular hiking spot and a lot of the hikers had seen that vehicle at about 11 a.m. that day, but didn’t assume it was occupied,” O’Brien said.
The driver, a Nanaimo resident and the sole occupant of the vehicle, was conscious when she was taken to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.
O’Brien said the police investigation into the crash is concluded.
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