‘It doesn’t matter what it takes, I have to stay alive’

Driver recounts 6 days spent trapped in crashed pickup truck under I-94

Zack Swets, a Portage firefighter/paramedic, was one of the initial first responders to arrive on the scene after a call came into 911 dispatch that there was a car in a ditch under Interstate 94 and it had been there for multiple days.

The dispatcher said the driver was still alive and talking and had been stuck in his car and unable to get out.

Whatever first responders who got the call on the afternoon of Dec. 26 were expecting, said battalion chief Ross Steffel, “it wasn’t that.”

“Where the truck was and the amount of damage to it, I won’t say it caught us off guard but it took us aback. To have someone still in there talking to us was remarkable,” Steffel said.

He and other first responders didn’t know at first how long Matt Reum, 27, of South Bend, had been trapped in his pickup along Salt Creek under the interstate. That information, Steffel said, came as he and other rescuers worked to get him out of the truck.

Swerving to avoid animal caused rollover crash

With humor, gravity and expletives, Reum recounted his story of survival in a lengthy interview

with the Post-Tribune.

Sitting in a meeting room at the Valparaiso branch of the Porter County Library on Feb. 13, Reum offered additional details about what happened the night of Dec. 20, when he crashed his gunmetal silver 2016 Dodge Ram 1500 Laramie Limited, and insight into how he kept himself alive as his hope of being found began to fade and he fought against three suicide

attempts over a matter of days.

“The first day, your mind almost goes into a state of, it doesn’t matter what it takes, I have to stay alive,” he said.

Reum, a welder with Boilermakers 374 in Hobart, had headed to the local’s workshop for three days to work with apprentices when he got a call the night of Dec. 20 that a friend who lived in the region had died his and funeral would be that Friday, Dec. 22, in Missouri. The call came from his friend’s mother.

Reum did some pre-Christmas window shopping at Southlake Mall in Hobart and stopped at Hooters for a couple of drinks before heading back around 10:30 p.m. to Mishawaka, where he lived at the time, so he could get ready to leave for the funeral the next day.

Though Reum usually takes the toll road east, he mistakenly got on I-80/94. He took the closest exit ramp in Portage, heading back west on I-80/94 so he could grab the toll road.

The weather was foggy and visibility wasn’t good, Reum said. As he was driving, he spotted a pair of eyes in the road. While driving lessons direct drivers to hit an animal in the road rather than swerve to avoid it, Reum swerved because he didn’t want to damage his truck when he had to leave for a funeral the next day.

He ended up on the shoulder of the interstate and bounced off a guardrail, which took off the tire on the front driver’s side of Reum’s truck.

“That started sending me down the hill and I went sideways and hit a patch of rocks, and that’s when I started rolling and lost consciousness,” he said. “I didn’t come to until my truck came to rest on the river bank and that’s where it sat for six days.”

MICHAEL GARD/POST-TRIBUNE Matt Reum, of South Bend, who spent six days trapped in his truck under a bridge on Interstate 94 in December, speaks about his ordeal in Valparaiso on Feb. 13.

KYLE TELECHAN/POST-TRIBUNE A semitruck crosses over Salt Creek on I-94 near the location where Reum spent six days stranded in his crashed truck before being discovered by Nivardo De La Torre and Mario Garcia.