‘Miracle’ girl, 7, walks free from plane crash
The seven-year-old girl who survived a plane crash that killed everyone else on board used a stick lit with fire to find her way through miles of thorny woodland to find help.
Sailor Gutzler dragged herself out of the private twin-engine plane on Friday evening with broken bones to see her mother, father, sister and cousin were dead.
Bloodied and traumatized, she used the burning wreckage to fashion a makeshift torch to guide her way through the Kentucky forest until she saw a light on in a house.
The dramatic details of Sailor’s night come from 71-year-old Larry Wilkins: the man who opened his door at 6.30pm (7.30pm ET) to find the little girl shaken on his porch
I opened the door and this little girl was standing there with bloody nose, bloody legs and bloody arms,’ Mr Wilkins told NBC.
‘Her voice was quivering. She told me her mom and dad were dead and she was in a plane crash and the plane was upside down.
‘She was bleeding pretty bad, her legs were bleeding, her face had a bloody nose. ‘She was barefoot, only had one sock on. ‘She asked if she could stay here,’ Wilkins recalled.
He immediately called 911 and then went to work cleaning up the bloodied girl with a washcloth.
When police arrived, the little girl was so shaken up she could hardly make herself understood.
‘I felt so sorry for her, tears come my eyes,’ said Wilkins who described the little girl’s journey as ‘very, very rough territory.’
The plane had taken off from Key West in Florida, where Sailor was visiting her adult brother Nick Brink with father, Marty Gutzler, 49, mother Kimberly Gutzler, 45, her nine-yearold daughter, Piper, and her cousin 14-year-old Sierra Wilder.
They were heading home to Mount Vernon, Illinois, when the plane reported engine troubles.
The crash killed everyone on board except for Sailor.