Brittany Bunnell, 28, of Edgartown, crashed her 2016 Subaru Forester on Herring Creek Road, sometime around 2 am Sunday morning, rolling the car on its roof and damaging 247 feet of split-rail fence.
The crash was only the beginning of Ms. Bunnell’s grueling ordeal. According to police, Ms. Bunnell, dazed from the accident, wandered the Katama triangle area for the rest of the night, enduring Arctic conditions — 10 degrees and winds gusting to 40 mph (making it feel more like 6 degrees below zero) — until she was discovered by a passerby around 6 am.
Edgartown Police Sergeant Craig Edwards was on routine patrol on Herring Creek Road, near the Slough Cove Road intersection, when he came across the overturned car at 4:36 am Sunday morning.
“The operator was not present with the vehicle,” Sergeant Edwards told The Times on Monday. “The fire department responded with quite a few personnel. We identified the vehicle owner and her address, which was in the area, and determined she hadn’t made it home. We started doing a search, the fire department using their thermal camera, and I was using my thermal camera from the cruiser, and we started searching the [Katama airfield]. The canine unit arrived, and we searched for quite some time.”
Sergeant Edwards said conditions were so severe on the wind-whipped airfield that first responders had to take rotations to warm up in the truck.
Ms. Bunnell was eventually found at first light, on Navy Way, and sent to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital for treatment.
“She was over a mile from the crash site,” Sergeant Edwards said. “She was disoriented from the accident, and she walked the opposite direction from her home. We were told she made her way onto someone’s porch and had spent quite some time there. Her feet had gotten wet, and she was quite cold.”
Ms. Bunnell is expected to make a full recovery. The accident remains under investigation.
