Woman Rescued After Floating On Air Mattress For Two Days On Oklahoma Lake
on Feb 06, 2022
A woman who spent two days floating on Oklahoma’s Lake Texoma atop an air mattress in freezing weather was rescued Thursday.
Two men aboard a freight train traveling from Madill, Oklahoma, to Irving, Texas, spotted a woman on the train tracks waving her arms and screaming for help while holding onto an air mattress. Cristhian Sosa and Justin Luster, a train conductor and engineer respectively, recalled the moment they spotted the woman to KRMG.
“She was literally laying on the ground waving one arm, basically her left arm, the one that her arm wasn’t stuck with her jacket, and she was asking for help, so we instantly knew she was hurt and she needed help,” Sosa said.
The train crew brought the train to a stop and called 911. Identified only as Connie, the woman told the train crew that she had been floating on the lake for two days and had been separated from the man she had been with. The pair had used the mattress as a raft to get to a boat on the lake.
“Well naturally we kinda thought maybe she was delirious, we really didn’t know what really happened and it wasn’t until we got to the crossing where highway patrolman had come out to find out her story was accurate, she had been floating on that air mattress for a solid day or two,” Luster said.
The crew loaded Connie onto the train and carried her to the next train crossing where they met authorities. Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that the woman floated nearly 2 miles on an air mattress, by herself, before floating to land and finding her way to the railroad tracks.
“I guess she has a boat and some of her stuff started drifting away and she tried to catch it and before she knew it she was on top of her air mattress and she was a drift and there was nothing she could do and she ended up by the rocks,” Sosa said.
The woman was taken to the hospital where she was treated for hypothermia and is expected to be okay. The man she was with was able to get to shore and make his way to a home for help.
“It was just kinda unexpected you know with the weather we were having, we were the only train out there at the time and really unexpected and I’m glad we could be there when we were,” Luster said.
