Video: 16 hour nightmare for elderly woman

Video: 16 hour nightmare for elderly woman

Elderly resident blacks out, crashes into dense bushes and found 16 hours later.

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The elderly Hillcrest (KZN) woman who spent 16 hours trapped in her car has been identified as Phyllis Hollis, according to a Youtube video from the South Africa Community Action Network (SA CAN). The dramatic rescue footage shows where her car went off the road, and a shaken Hollis can be seen being carried from the scene on a stretcher. 

Phyllis Hollis went missing at about 5pm last week Sunday when her car veered off the M41 bend that joins the M4 Durban-bound, landing down an embankment in thick bush.

Rescuers searched for her vehicle for about 16 hours.

The Community Action Network's Brian Jones spoke to Hollis' family this morning, who say they are hopeful she will be able to leave hospital soon.

He says Hollis, a Hillcrest resident, had been trapped in the car and may have been knocked unconscious. She was extremely disoriented after the incident.

Jones says the thick bush made spotting the car a near-impossible task.

"In this particular area, she literally was ten metres off the road - just down the road from Virginia Airport. And there was a lot of discussion of actually putting up a helicopter to go and look in that area. We know that people in the course of the night tried to break into the vehicle. I think that people thought that the vehicle was abandoned [and] they were going to recover it in the morning," he said. 

Image: East Coast Radio

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