Woman found alive spent almost a day upside down in crashed car off Kentucky highway

By WLKY Digital Team

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    SHEPHERDSVILLE, Kentucky (WLKY) — A woman who police have been searching for nearly a day has been found alive off of Interstate 65 in Shepherdsville.

Nora Thompson, 57, was driving when she went off of the road on Monday near Cedar Grove Road.

Shepherdsville Police Chief Rick McCubbin said they received a call around 8 p.m. that night from a disoriented Thompson. They think the crash happened as early as 3:45 p.m.

She left the roadway near a ramp and took out a lamppost, police said.

Her family had been in contact with her, but were unable to find her exact location. Police said they searched day and night.

They tried to ping her cellphone, but McCubbin said it did not provide an exact location.

He said they started looking again as soon as the sun came up on Tuesday.

Around 11 a.m., she was found inside her crashed vehicle, which went into a cluster of trees down in an embankment not far from the road, making it difficult to see.

“I don’t think they were up 5-10 minutes and they were able to spot the vehicle,” McCubbin said. “That close to everything but so hidden in that clump of trees.”

They found her with help from a helicopter. She was upside down in the vehicle and had blood on her face, police said.

McCubbin said she was conscious and a little bit confused. Some of her injuries were serious, but he said they appear to be non-life-threatening.

Crews were able to get her out of the SUV using the jaws of life, and put her into an ambulance.

The SUV was pulled up to the road around 11:45 a.m.

Police said the community was invested in finding Thompson, many showing up to police asking where they could look and telling them where investigators should go.

Jamie Underwood said she didn’t know Thompson, but wanted to help find her.

“Hallelujah, I’m so happy,” Underwood said. “We’ve been out in the woods yelling her name, going to retention ponds, just everywhere we could think of to try to find Miss Nora and bring her home safe.”

While her injuries are serious, McCubbin said it could have been worse.

“This is one of the deadliest stretches of I-65 in the Louisville area. We have a lot of fatal’s right here in this 6-7 mile stretch so it’s a horrible accident but it’s obviously a good outcome and we don’t see that often,” McCubbin said.

McCubbin added there were two fatal accidents near where Thompson’s car was found over the weekend.

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