A group of runners were out for a routine run along a paved trail Saturday morning in Greenville, South Carolina, when they heard screams coming from nearby. The screams, it turned out, were by a local woman who had been missing for more than four days and was feared dead, reports FOX Carolina.
“We heard some noise in the woods, someone calling,” one of the runners, Shannon Sternberg, told FOX Carolina. “We couldn’t tell if it was someone calling or kids playing but we stopped and listened.”
Another one of the runners, Paul Myers, followed the noise and found Kimara Hughey, 24, trapped in a ravine just off the trail, covered in cuts and bruises and in a lot of pain. Sternberg dialed 9-1-1, and rescue workers were able to pull her out and get her to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Search parties had been looking for Hughey since Tuesday, when she was reported missing. Another runner in the group, Gabby Sanders, said this wasn’t the first time they had run through the area since Hughey’s disappearance.
“We had actually run through here several times this week since she’s been missing and we hadn’t heard anything,” Sanders told FOX Carolina.
The runners likely saved Hughey’s life, as doctors told her parents that she wouldn’t have survived another day in the woods, FOX Carolina reported.
There is no word yet about how Hughey came to be trapped in the woods, but her parents believe foul play was involved.