Swede trapped in car for two months ‘a case of a lifetime’

STOCKHOLM: Swedish doctors and survival experts were calling it the “case of a lifetime” yesterday after an emaciated and near-speechless 44-year-old man was dragged from an icebound car, claiming he had been inside the vehicle for two months.

The man, identified as Peter Skyllberg, was discovered on Friday by a group of snowmobile drivers. They spotted his snow-covered car parked at the end of a track in a forest near the town of Umea, about 260km north of Stockholm in Sweden’s frozen north, where temperatures hit minus 30°C.

After brushing off a 60cm-thick crust of snow covering the vehicle, they were shocked to see a man curled up in a ball on the back seat, wrapped in a sleeping bag. Photographs of the inside of the car published yesterday showed the dashboard and driving seat coated with frost and ice.

Ebbe Nyberg, a policeman called to the scene, said: “He was in a very poor state. He said he had been there for a very long time and survived on a little snow.” Police said they believed his account. An ambulance was called to the scene. Looking weak, pale, emaciated and scarcely able to speak, Skyllberg was taken out of the back of the car and transported to the Noorland University hospital in Umea. He told astounded doctors that he had been snowed up inside the car since December 19.

He was reported to be making a slow but steady recovery yesterday. Doctors said a healthy person who was sufficiently warm would normally expect to survive without food for a maximum of four weeks.

“But this is the case of a lifetime,” said Dr Ulf Segerberg, chief medical officer at Noorland hospital. – The Independent