Staff writer
At about 8:30 p.m. April 13, Sonja Maddox, 72, of Lincolnville went off a curve on a gravel road and her Jeep flipped completely over when driving west near the northeast Marion County border.
Maddox’s two daughters, Nancy Maddox Woodrow and Leigh Ann Swigert, both said that Maddox was ejected from the vehicle. Suffering a broken ankle, she crawled back into the vehicle, which was standing upright. She lost her cell phone in the accident and gave up on a search until dawn the next morning. The engine was still operational so she had the heater and radio for company, Swigert said.
She found her phone in close proximity to the Jeep the next morning. She was able to get service even though she was stranded in an isolated area, close to no residences.
The sheriff’s office received the call at 7:30 a.m. After about 11 hours in her vehicle, she was transported by LifeTeam helicopter to Via Christi-St. Francis Hospital in Wichita. She found she had sustained several other injuries in the accident: a fractured left vertebra in her lower back and some internal bleeding.
“Thankfully none of her injuries were life threatening,” Maddox Woodrow wrote in an email. “But she does have quite a long road to recovery.”