NEED TO KNOW
- Jacob “Jake” Schmitt was in Utah’s Uinta Mountains with his dog Buddy when his vehicle “lost control” and flipped, according to a GoFundMe page
- In the crash, Jake “sustained a broken leg, fractured ankles, and broken ribs,” the page stated.
- His said his vehicle “flipped probably 15-20 times,” during which “it kind of sort of rag-dolled me out”
A man crawled for miles down a mountain in Utah for over 11 hours through the night to rescue himself after his vehicle fell off the side of a cliff.
On July 20, Jacob “Jake” Schmitt was out in the state’s Uinta Mountains with his dog Buddy when his “side-by-side vehicle lost control” and flipped, per a GoFundMe page that’s been set up to help him financially amid ongoing medical treatment.
“In the crash, Jake sustained a broken leg, fractured ankles, and broken ribs,” the page stated.
“Losing his phone, and with no light except for the one on Buddy’s collar, Jake did something extraordinary: he splinted his leg and crawled for miles down the mountain for over 11 hours through the night, until he reached his truck, where he drove himself to The Oakley Diner, where staff called 911,” the message, written by a friend running the GoFundMe page, continued.
Schmitt — who is originally from Buffalo, New York, but now lives in Ogden, Utah — was taken to Park City Hospital, while the Oakley Fire Station “took care of Buddy and Jake’s truck until his family could be contacted,” the page stated. “When Jake and Buddy were finally reunited at the hospital, it was nothing short of moving — a powerful moment of loyalty, love, and survival,” the page added.
In a July 29 update on the page, organizer Kaitlynn Cline wrote that Schmitt had now been discharged from the hospital and was back at home with his beloved dog.
Schmitt had been hunting for deer at the time of the accident, local NBC-affiliated station KSL-TV reported.
While speaking to Fox 13, Schmitt recalled of his vehicle rolling over, “Immediately I realized it was going over like a capsizing ship. The machine flipped probably 15-20 times by the end of it, but I would say [to the] best of my recollection, probably the second or third flip is when it kind of sort of rag-dolled me out.”
“When I came to and stuff and started to do kind of damage control, he was sort of just there staring at me without a scratch, which almost makes me emotional, but it’s unreal,” he added of his dog Buddy, who was in a kennel in the back of the vehicle, per the outlet.
After splinting his own leg, Schmitt made the decision to crawl for help, stating that he made it back to his truck by daybreak before driving to Oakley Diner, where he asked worker Yenni Saiz to call 911, Fox 13 reported.
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“A couple broken ribs on this side, a broken right ankle, I believe, left ankle, and then left tibia and fibula, and then about a bruise everywhere you can have it,” Schmitt told the outlet of his injuries.
Schmitt told KSL-TV of strapping up his leg, “I laid my leg on part of the roll cage that had broken off, put a tick on it, duct taped it, took my belt off and then really tightened it all with my belt.”
“Everybody wants to act tough, but I wanted to give up every time, all the time — but it’s like, either I die here, or I figure out how to keep going,” he insisted of his survival, adding to the outlet, “That was it.”
Schmitt told the station that he alternated between dragging himself and crawling as he made his way back to his truck overnight, with his only visibility coming from a light on his dog’s collar.
“That little circle on his collar — I turned it on, and he would heel,” Schmitt continued. “He was very well trained, so he would heel when I needed to see where I was going and see if I could drink water out of the creek, and we would drink water out of the creek together.”
“I couldn’t have done it without him,” he added to the outlet of his beloved 6-year-old dog. “It was like having your best friend there just to kind of nudge you like, ‘Keep going, keep going,’ you know.”
The GoFundMe set up to help Schmitt had reached over $15,000 as of Thursday, July 31. PEOPLE has attempted to reach out to Schmitt for an update on his recovery.
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