6-15-07

A 5-year-old girl shocked searchers on Friday, when she
emerged from the woods in the nude and holding raspberries. The child was scratched and naked, but otherwise OK. She had been feared dead after being swept away while boating with her grandfather Wednesday evening. Search crews had pulled the body of her grandfather from the Kankakee River in eastern Illinois just hours earlier.

Hannah Klamecki’s wounds included scratches on her face and body, and thick dirt underneath her nails. She had suffered poison Ivy rashes on her legs and had difficulty walking because splinters and thorns had cut her feet. Aside from that, she was a very lucky little girl.

Authorities believe she and her grandfather had stopped to swim at an island in the river, when the current swept the girl away. The grandfather drowned in the process of trying to retrieve her. Hannah told searchers that she was wearing floats on her arms and pulled herself from the water with a branch. She then spent one day and two nights in the woods around the area, naked and eating raspberries, before being rescued by the search party.