The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Alberta said they are baffled how a woman involved in a car accident ended up in a river nearly 1 mile from the crash site.

Early Thursday, the unidentified woman's station wagon apparently swerved into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer in Kootenay National Park. The car spun and struck the truck a second time, RCMP Staff Sgt. Doug Pack told the Calgary Sun.

When emergency crews arrived there was only the car and the dog but nobody else around the station wagon, Pack said. She managed to get out of her car before anyone actually saw her.

For two hours, police were baffled as to where the driver was and contacted area hospitals to see if the person had shown up on their own. Around 7 a.m., a jacket was spotted on the roadside and police then spotted the woman in the fast-flowing Vermillion River, clinging to an overhanging tree branch.

She was hospitalized and treated for hypothermia, although Pack said he wasn't sure of other injuries.

How or why the woman ended up in the Vermillion River has yet to be explained, he said.

Bookmark this news