"Help! Heeelllppp!"

[R]

With an imminent frost, Mitchell and I walked down to Dorothy's house to get some old flower pots she offered. The plan was to turn them upside down and put them on top of the tomato plants in our garden to keep them from freezing.

As Mitchell and I opened the doors of the red shed, we heard a high voice in the distance. It sounded a little like, "help!" but since there are kids who live in that direction, we thought it was them. We moved over to the grey shed and found a couple of coffee cans that would also work, and were about to leave when we heard a more distinct, "Help! Heeeellllpppp!" Still not sure what it was, I told Mitch to look around the corner and see if anyone really did need help. He did, and came back in a minute, saying, "I think someone is laying on the ground over there."

We walked over together to see a girl, about 20, laying on the ground in the woods about 100 yards north of the shed. "What's going on here?" I asked.

"I can't move my legs," she answered. She was dressed in sweat pants and a long sleeved shirt, and sneakers. She had no visible signs of injury, nor were there any signs of a struggle or accident of any kind.

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"I was in a ditch. I don't know." I asked her name, and she said it was Jennifer.

I told Mitchell to go to Dorothy's and have her call 911. While he was doing that, I put my coat over Jennifer and asked her some more questions.

"I've had mental problems," she explained. She didn't know where she had been, and could not explain to me how she got from her house to a ditch. The last thing she claimed she could clearly remember was watching television the night before and going to sleep. She was also unable to iterate why her legs wouldn't move. She claimed to live at "515", which is the property to our north, but didn't seem to have any idea where she was. She seemed to think she had been on the ground there for about four hours.

Mitchell returned with Dorothy, so they stayed with her and I went to our house to call Central Dispatch and give them a few more details, and get another coat for myself.

Within a few minutes, several Ponotoc County deputies, Chickasaw Lighthorse Police officers, Byng Fire-Rescue units, and EMS arrived. They asked her all the same questions I did, and she gave them similar answers.

They examined her and found that aside from being very cold, she was not injured, and coaxed her to her feet. Dan Randolph, a deputy and Byng Fire's Chief, gave her a ride, presumably home.

[JP]

Good job

[DiscGo]

Right on. Good work!

[Mtnman1830]

Good Job.

[R]

i just thought it was a cool way to spend an hour on Friday afternoon. I don't know the girl, so I don't guess there's any way to check and see if she's ok. I hope she gets it together.

[RugerShooter]

The world needs more people like you way to go.

[R]

The world needs more people like you way to go.

Upon encountering her, I was not without my suspicions. Before I got too close, I scanned the woods in all directions, looking for a possible accomplice in, well, who knows what kind of scam or trap. Only when I felt sure she was alone and in genuine distress did I come right up to her.

Later in the evening, Abby and I talked to Mitchell about that. You know, a repeat of the talk we have with him periodically about how to deal with those situations. Don't let anyone in the house, for example, but offer to call 911 for them, etc. Abby was more freaked out about it than I was. She thought maybe this "Jennifer" girl was whacked out on meth or something. To me it seemed more like she might have had an episode of sleepwalking, possibly with assistance from a hypnotic sleep aid like Ambien. It could have been anything, though, from conversion disorder to some kind of amnesia.

I called the deputy who was first on the scene yesterday and all he could tell me was that she "has issues" and is on disability, and that they took her home and turned her over to her caretaker, who he thought might have been her grandparents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

-R

[DirkHammergate]

The world needs more people like you way to go.

Upon encountering her, I was not without my suspicions. Before I got too close, I scanned the woods in all directions, looking for a possible accomplice in, well, who knows what kind of scam or trap. Only when I felt sure she was alone and in genuine distress did I come right up to her.

Later in the evening, Abby and I talked to Mitchell about that. You know, a repeat of the talk we have with him periodically about how to deal with those situations. Don't let anyone in the house, for example, but offer to call 911 for them, etc. Abby was more freaked out about it than I was. She thought maybe this "Jennifer" girl was whacked out on meth or something. To me it seemed more like she might have had an episode of sleepwalking, possibly with assistance from a hypnotic sleep aid like Ambien. It could have been anything, though, from conversion disorder to some kind of amnesia.

I called the deputy who was first on the scene yesterday and all he could tell me was that she "has issues" and is on disability, and that they took her home and turned her over to her caretaker, who he thought might have been her grandparents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

-R

Bizarre... I had this happen to me outside Jackson while me and the Ex were car camping it in our Suby in some remote area. About 3 am (and in the middle of nowhere) some hysterical lady starts banging on our car window, in hysterics. We are literally in the middle of nowhere so I had moved all our gear outside the Suby and luckily locked the doors before he hit the sack. I shoved out a bunch of extra blankets and bag through a crack in my window, told her to keep warm and that I wasn't getting out of the car til sunlight. Appearantly she was an Aunt to a bunch of teenagers who slipped acid into her drink hours before and she wandered off in some sort of panic. Light came, we got her out of there but I was seriously scare thinking it was some sort of squatter set up.