It usually took Cherie Nicole Mitchell around 30 minutes to reach her friend’s house in Carrollton. Mitchell’s friend said the two women finished talking on the telephone around 1 a.m. Saturday after confirming that Mitchell was on her way to the residence.

When Mitchell didn’t arrive, the friend became concerned and contacted Mitchell’s parents, according to Georgia State Patrol Post Commander Joey Boatright.

Sometime just after that phone call Mitchell, 20, of Buchanan reportedly swerved to miss a deer on Miller Academy Road. Her 2006 Dodge Dakota pickup truck plunged down a 40-foot embankment and ran into a tree, according to Trooper Chris Wigginton.

The impact was so severe that it crushed the front of the driver’s side, pinning Mitchell from the waist down into the vehicle, Wigginton said.

Though Mitchell’s family and friends searched through the night, she wasn’t discovered until around 7:30 a.m., just after sunrise, when a woman saw the tail-end of the truck sticking up from the embankment.

The woman immediately made an emergency phone call that was passed through to the State Patrol. Wigginton was on call and responded to the scene.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and I can easily say it was one of the most horrific accidents I’ve ever seen that didn’t involve a fatality,” Wigginton said.

Both the engine and battery shut down on impact, which left Mitchell trapped in the vehicle without any source of heat during the six-hour period when the temperature descended to 38 degrees.

“As far as I remember, she was only wearing a long sleeve T-shirt,” Wigginton said. “She wasn’t wearing a coat or anything.”

Upon her discovery, Carrollton Fire Department arrived to try to extract Mitchell from the truck.

“The dash was on her chest and waist,” Capt. Bill Messer said. “There couldn’t have been much more intrusion for her to still be alive.”

Messer said a crew of 15, including members of the Carroll County Fire Department, worked for 45 minutes to rescue Mitchell.

“We worked with every bit of equipment we had,” Messer said. “We had to have a wrecker move the vehicle about six inches before we could get the dash off of her. That’s not something we would normally do, but we did what we had to.”

Mitchell was conscious during the rescue and both Wigginton and Messer agreed that she was surprisingly calm.

“She was a lot more calm than I would have been,” Messer said. “She was determined to live and she did.”

The biggest concern during the rescue was that after Mitchell was removed, she would bleed to death.

“There were a lot of concerns,” Messer said. “A number of components made the rescue d ifficult.”

Mitchell was finally freed from the vehicle and flown to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

She sustained substantial lower extremity injuries, including numerous fractures, Messer said.