California Man in Car Crash Survives Six Days on Leaves, Water
iStockphoto/Thinkstock (file photo)(LOS ANGELES) -- Two-hundred feet below a twisting, turning road in Southern California, the family of David La Vau found a miracle.
"We stopped at every ravine," said La Vau’s daughter, Lisa, according to ABC News' Los Angeles affiliate KABC-TV. "I looked over every hill and then my brother got out of the car. We kept screaming, and the next thing we heard dad say 'help, help.' And there he was."
There was La Vau, 67, found alive Thursday by his family members six days after his car plunged 200 feet into a ravine off a mountain road in the Angeles National Forest.
La Vau survived by building a makeshift camp, eating bugs and leaves and drinking water from a nearby creek, his family said.
"The car is just horrific, I don't know how he survived," Lisa Lavau said.
La Vau and her three siblings became suspicious when their dad failed to return home last Friday, and they didn’t hear from him for days.
"My dad would never not call his kids, there's four of us," she said. "By the time the fourth day, the fifth day, and then the sixth day, we knew something was wrong. He supposedly just lost control. There was a bright car, and if you saw where the accident happened, several cars have gone off."
The family reported their father missing to police but when the search by authorities went nowhere, the siblings took matters into their own hands and formed their own search.
The break in the case came when La Vau’s bank told the family he had used his debit card at a nearby grocery store. Lisa and her siblings then began driving the route from the store to their dad’s home in Lake Hughes, Calif., retracing his last known steps.
After stopping at every curve in the road along the way, Lisa's brother finally heard his father calling out for help.
La Vau was pulled from the ravine and taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital where he remains in stable condition.
Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio
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