Nashville police found a New Jersey woman who had been missing for nearly seven hours Thursday morning wandering and disheveled along the Cumberland River, not far from where fraternity boy Riley Strain disappeared earlier this year.
Authorities began searching around 4 a.m. for a 33-year-old woman who had become separated from a friend near Third Avenue and Broadway about two hours earlier. According to WKRN.
She was last seen on surveillance cameras downtown near the Woodland Street Bridge, where Strain was last seen before his disappearance in March.
Police quickly released recorded footage of the woman walking towards the river.
Meanwhile, dozens of Metro police and local firefighters were using thermal imaging, GPS obtained from cell phone signals, helicopters and drones in the search.
Authorities found the woman’s shoes and cellphone in the bank, along with a small amount of blood, the sheriff’s office said.
Later, at about 9am, detectives found her climbing up the riverbank with cuts and scratches.
The woman was dirty and had no shoes on, but knew who she was and told police she had been in the river, but did not know why she was there, police said.
She also called her mother at one point, who became concerned and asked local police to check on her safety.
Authorities rushed her to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for treatment, the media reported.
“I think it’s really a miracle she survived because she climbed right out on her own,” said Sergeant Bob Nielson of the Metro Nashville Police Department’s cold case unit.
“We don’t even know how far down the river she went,” Neilson said. “Honestly, she was lucky.”
Her disappearance was eerily similar to that of Riley Strain, a 22-year-old college student who was thrown out of a Nashville bar in March and disappeared into the night.
But his story did not have a happy ending.
Two weeks later, authorities recovered his body from the Cumberland River, about eight miles downstream from where he disappeared.
The coroner declared his death an accident and the result of drowning and poisoning.
