What started as a salvage mission for a Jeep found submerged in a Texas lake quickly turned into a rescue mission when witnesses noticed a woman trapped inside the vehicle.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office reported that it received a call from a fisher on Friday morning who said he noticed a black Jeep underwater about 40 feet from shore at Lake o’ the Pines in east Texas.
Photos released from the sheriff’s office show the vehicle almost completely submerged underwater with only a small portion of its roof visible above the surface of the lake.
Photo of a black Jeep submerged underwater with only a small portion of its roof still visible above the surface of Lake o’ the Pines in east Texas.
Marion County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook
Deputies arrived on the scene, followed shortly behind by a local wrecker service brought in to haul the Jeep back to land.
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The fisher who made the call waited in the area for authorities to arrive and used his boat to help the tow truck worker prepare the Jeep for removal. When the two men approached the Jeep, they “discovered a person was still in the vehicle and moving,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a Facebook post.
The fisherman and tow truck worker helped the woman into the boat, a moment that was photographed by the sheriff’s office.
A fisherman and tow truck worker pull a woman from a Jeep submerged in an east Texas lake on April 7, 2023.
Marion County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook
The woman who was rescued was not identified by police. Marion County reports she was safely brought back to land and transported to a local hospital.
Police later determined that the woman found in the submerged Jeep was listed as a missing person with the nearby Longview Texas Police Department. Longview police declined to identify the woman, citing the circumstances of the case.
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It’s unclear how long the woman had been missing before she was rescued from the lake. Local broadcaster KHOU reports she had been missing for two days, since Wednesday, while NPR writes that she had been reported missing hours earlier on Friday. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear.
Officials did not reveal how long the Jeep was in the water or how it became submerged. No additional details about the incident have been released.
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