Bowie Student Trapped 8 Days Details Pain, Survival Tactics

They conducted an aerial search for him Friday night from 9 to 10:30 -- well after dark, according to the helicopter squad's aviation log. He was discovered by a motorist Saturday evening.

"I don't think it was a priority," Peggy McCormick said.

Added James McCormick: "He's been there the whole time, less than one mile from home."

According to his parents, Julian McCormick was on Powder Mill Road near the on-ramp to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway when he lost control of his car. It ran off the road and down the steep ravine.

He told his parents that he was not sure how long he was unconscious in the car. He woke to find his seat belt strapped across his chest and his breathing labored. After he cut the seat belt, his parents said, he waited to be rescued. James McCormick said it took more than a week for his son to get his driver's-side door open and get out. The McCormicks said their son was able to keep time on his watch, but the days got away from him and he could not use his cellphone because its battery was dead. The McCormicks also said their son does not recall how the accident occurred.

Julian McCormick told them the car was upside down in the ravine and that at first, he couldn't get out.

His mother said he told her that he was able to get to the creek for some water.

"He told me, 'Thank God for these size 13 shoes, Mom, because I was able to drink out of them.' "

Her son managed to tell her that he was very hungry so he grabbed a fish and ate it. He felt he needed to eat to survive, his mother said.

"He said: 'Mom, I just knew I had to see you again. Mom, I was so afraid that I was going to die,' " she recounted.

It wasn't until days after he landed in the ravine, Peggy McCormick said, that her son was able to drag himself up to the road. He doesn't know how long it took to climb the 30-foot embankment. His timing was good, though: Just before 6 p.m. Saturday, Leigh Ann Hess, who was riding in a car with her mother, noticed the soaking wet and muddy teenager lying on the side of the road, wiggling his fingers in an attempt to flag down help.

She jumped out to help him, and about a half-dozen other drivers eventually stopped. Rescue workers arrived within minutes. He was able to give his name and address but didn't know what day it was.

McCormick's survival story, remarkable as it is, is similar to others told across the country: the 83-year-old Florida woman who survived three days while her car was suspended in mangrove trees in a swamp, an elderly San Jose couple who were in a steep ravine for four days before they were rescued.

Doctors say survival depends on many factors, including age, the weather and access to water. People react to dehydration differently, depending on their health and physical condition, and usually they can survive days, even weeks, without food, said Eric Glasser, assistant chief of service for the emergency department at Georgetown University Hospital.

Family members said yesterday that they did not know when Julian McCormick would be released from the hospital.

"He's got no breaks or fractures, no internal injuries," his mother said. "If something had happened and he'd had internal injuries, they would have found the car, but he would have been gone. God was with him."

Staff writer Jenna Johnson and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.