Woman missing for month survives on berries, muddy water
INSIDE EDITION - An Alabama woman who was missing for nearly a month has been found naked and filthy on a rural road, authorities said.
A driver on remote Highway 82 spied Lisa Theris, covered in dirt and insect bites, on Saturday. At first, Judy Garner thought she was looking at a deer, she said.
When she realized it was a young woman, she jerked her car to a stop.
Theris, 25, had been missing since July 18. She was scarred by bites, scratches and rashes, her family said.
Her hair was matted and caked in dirt.
“She said she ate berries and drank muddy water,” Garner told NBC. “I gave her a hug and said, ‘You poor thing. You’ve been through a lot.”
Theris begged Garner not to leave her side as the woman called for help.
The Theris family is overjoyed.
“It’s pretty much indescribable how amazing it was to see her in person again after all of this,” her brother, Will Theris, told InsideEdition.com Tuesday.
His sister “is in a lot of pain,” he said. “She can’t move without her whole body aching. But she is slowly making progress, such as eating real food in small quantities.”
The radiology student from Louisville, Ala., lost 50 pounds in the weeks she was missing and wandered the isolated woods, disoriented, eating mushrooms, berries and drinking from muddy streams.
She had been with two men who burglarized a hunting camp, authorities told local reporters, but she wanted no part of it.
She ran into the woods and got lost, WSFA-TV reported.
The men have been charged with burglary. Additional charges are possible, officials said this week. More information will be released as Theris recuperates, authorities said.
Her brother said that investigators have asked his family not to comment on the circumstances surrounding her disappearance until more details are released.
“We don’t want to speculate,” he said.