Four Friends Rescue A Camden County Man Lost In The Woods
By Cleve Bryan
WINSLOW TOWNSHIP, N.J., (CBS) -- Four friends came through in the clutch to rescue a man lost in the woods for 3 days.
Christina Urlich, Christopher Buete, Nicholas Redrow and Brittany Scott volunteered to help find 61-year-old James Wharton after Winslow Township Police reported him missing on Tuesday morning.
According to his neighbor, Wharton left a BBQ Monday night on Sharp Avenue and decided to cut through the woods to get back to his house on Reading Avenue in the Township's Albion section.
Wharton lost his bearings so he called 9-1-1 Tuesday morning saying he was lost and then his phone died.
A multi-agency search ensued but no one could find Wharton in the thick, swampy woods.
Around 7:30 pm Thursday Urlich and her friends stopped their ATVs near the 200 block of Williamstown Road and heard a man calling out.
"He said his name, he said he's been walking in circles. We're like oh my god this is the guy," recalls Urlich.
The four friends tramped through thorns and thigh-deep mud for several hundred yards and found Wharton in very weak condition.
"Me and my friend Nick had to carry him out and the two girls Christina and Brittany were pushing the sticker bushes away so we could carry him out," says Buete.
He says Wharton thoroughly enjoyed drinking a Pepsi as he rode on their ATV to where police were stationed.
Wharton is currently hospitalized due to severe dehydration.
"He looked relieved, he looked happy to be alive. I think it opened his eyes and it's a greater appreciation for life," says Jamie Connors who went with her husband Buck to visit their neighbor.
