PORTAGE, Ind. — A 27-year-old man from northern Indiana is speaking publicly for the first time since he was found inside his crashed pickup truck beneath a highway bridge after surviving on rainwater for six days.
"It's been a week and a day since I was rescued, and for that, I am beyond happy."
It started Dec. 20, when Matt Reum was driving a 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck westbound on I-94 when it went off the road. Investigators believe the truck went into the north ditch, missed a protective guardrail, overturned into the creek and stopped under the I-94 bridge.
"The only reason my voice sounds melancholy right now is because I'm so tired," said Reum, a Mishawaka native, in one of two Facebook videos he posted Thursday afternoon. "You guys have made something that would be so hard for a normal person to go through, and you have showered me with love, and you have shown me so much kindness. There is not enough, and there is no way I could ever start to repay you guys or say 'thank you' enough."
Police said Reum was trapped in the truck and unable to call for help.
Around 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 26, two fishermen were walking along Salt Creek, near Chesterton. They saw the crashed pickup and the man inside.
"He said to me that he's been there for a long time, that he had almost lost all hope because nobody was there. And one more day and something could have been very different here," said Mario Garcia, one of the men who found the wreckage. "But he was a young guy, you know, and it looked like he was really fighting to be there, to stay around. He didn't want to go."
It took first responders more than an hour to free Reum from the truck. Then, a medical helicopter flew him to South Bend.
Police said Reum drank rain water for hydration in order to survive while being exposed to the elements.
An Indiana State Police crash report noted Reum told then he swerved to the right to avoid striking a deer and crashed.
In the videos posted Thursday, Reum said one of his legs had to be amputated above his knee, and he also had a broken ankle and hand.
"They believe my surgery has gone well enough, and I'm healing strong enough from that to where I can start working on getting back into society," said Reum, who was moved to the rehabilitation floor Wednesday. "I'm now walker-bound, and I have a wheelchair, and I'm able to get around, which is amazing."
Reum said he's planning to get a new apartment that is more wheelchair-friendly, so he can get around better.
"If I didn't have this huge support group that I have from you guys, it would be almost impossible, but I'm looking right now, and I can do it," Reum said.
As of Friday afternoon, the videos have more than 45,000 views.