Man trapped under truck for several days talks about how he survived

The young man who had been missing for several days and found alive beneath an overturned truck in the foothills of Bonneville County this week talks about how he survived.

Joesph “Joe” Rightmire, 21, of Idaho Falls was found Monday night near Taylor Mountain Creek and Henry Creek Road and has been at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center since.

Rightmire explains in a news conference Friday, that the night started with him trying to go meet a friend up the “backside of Wolverine.” He calls the trip being led on “wild goose chase,” so when he got to his destination he was “a little annoyed.” He got an argument with that friend but patched things up quickly.

Soon after they both left, he went down a dirt road.

“A little white car came around that corner,” said Rightmire. “It was just instinct to jolt the wheel because where they were at I knew I was going to hit them.”

That quick maneuver, Rightmire says was the last he could remember before he woke up the next day.

“To tell you the truth at first I thought I was still dreaming because I didn’t know where I was at, all I could see was dirt and white,” Rightmire said. “It took me a few hours to even realize that I was underneath my truck.”

After a few moments of realizing where he was, that’s when the panic started to set in.

“Freaked out for about 20 minutes,” he says. “Once I was able to actually calm myself down, I started to think, ‘okay, what can I do? What are my choices here?'”

Rightmire explains he had to stick his left leg up into the top corner of his windshield on the passenger side where there was a root that made a “90 degree angle” because he was trying to pull his face out of the mud and water.

“When the truck landed and I went out the windshield, half my face was in mud and water and [my right] arm was tucked up underneath me,” Rightmire said. “I couldn’t move it.”

Rightmire tried to move his arm that was pinned but says it felt as if “there was a giant prong” and “two little prongs” all across it.

“I thought maybe I’d actually lost this arm,” said Rightmire.

With his other arm, he grabbed a stick that was near him and poked his right limb and says he could not feel it.

Shaken up by that discovery, he started to grab anything that he was able to get a hold of and felt the “big prong” and “two little prongs” on his arm.

He continued to try and move the arm for a while, but then noticed something else going on.

“The truck was actually starting to sink down on the one side that I was pinned on,” said Rightmire.

The truck submerging was due to the mud and water it was in. Rightmire also said he had to urinate himself to dig up some of the softer sand to help relieve pressure off of his chest and which gave him a little more “wiggle room.”

“I wasn’t sure if anyone was actually looking,” Rightmire says. “I could hear vehicles go down the road and I was just screaming and just crying, trying to get someones attention. Just where my truck was, you wouldn’t have been able to see me or hear me.”

Rightmire said that towards the second day of being trapped underneath his truck he felt that he was becoming delusional. He recounts having conversations with his sister, Tasha Goforth, and a man named David.

“I wouldn’t have caught on except for the fact that I realized, they could hear what I was thinking and not was I was saying,” Rightmire said. “I noticed my mouth wasn’t moving when I was having these conversations.”

Rightmire jokingly compares everything that had happened to the TV series, “Naked and Afraid.”

“It’s not really funny, but afterwards when you get out and you’re sitting there and you’re thinking about it, it’s like ‘wow’ I didn’t realize how bad off I was, ” Rightmire said. “I didn’t realize what I was even saying to myself to make it through and just to be okay. I mean I was adamant I was going to die.”

Laying there, thinking the worst of what was going to happen, Rightmire heard something.

“I swore it was a Powerstroke [engine], I swore it was a Powerstroke,” Rightmire laughs. “It was actually a Cummins [engine]. It was actually [Tasha] and her friend, Jason.”

Goforth and her friend, who does not want his last name released, were looking for Rightmire for a while. It was Monday night they saw a bunch of trash on that was in the bed of his truck. Goforth says something was telling her friend that they needed to check where near the intersection they found him.

“Jason gets out and says, “God. They just leave this crap here,” Rightmire says with a smile on his face. “I just opened up, screaming and crying.”

Rightmire recalls Jason shouting, “we found him, we found him.” Goforth immediately went to look and call for help and get Rightmire out underneath his truck.

Goforth says that she had no idea if her brother was alive or not at that moment.

“When I called and I [was] talking to dispatch, I was no help at all,” Goforth said as she recounts the phone call. “‘Is he alive?’ I have no idea. ‘Is he breathing? Is he inside the truck outside the truck?’ I had no idea if he was even okay.”

It was just a reassurance for Goforth to finally find her brother after searching for since Sunday.

What somewhat of a peace of mind for Goforth, still had Rightmire figuring out what was going to happen to him.

“The whole time I was under there and I could see Jason, I was screaming at him, ‘please don’t leave,” Rightmire said. “That was my biggest thing, I was terrified he was going to leave and no ones coming back.”

Rightmire then recalls the arrival of Connor Cook, a firefighter/paramedic, and Jeff Hardy, a firefighter. He describes the rescue itself as “a little rough” but saying that the two rescuers were fast and thought quick.

The paramedics first used large airbags that inflated and lifted the bumper on his truck, so it could no longer “squish” Rightmire’s head into the dirt.

“[Hardy] is sitting there, holding my hand saying ‘hey man, everything’s going to be alright we’re here,” said Rightmire.

Rightmire says he could then start to feel his hood come off of his head. He started to get excited that he was free, and tried to pull himself out but felt a pinch underneath his pelvis. The rescue crew then used two more larger airbags.

“I can’t give these guys enough gratitude,” Rightmire said. “Getting me out of there, making sure that I was okay and coming up and checking on me.”

Goforth continued to praise Cook and Hardy, saying how impressed she was with the response time.

“I thought we were going to be waiting 20 minutes when I called you guys,” Goforth said. “I was there for 5 minutes before [Cook and Hardy] pulled up. Saying, ‘where is he? Where am I going?’ They seemed to know right where you were going.”

The rescue crew says that they spent two hours trying to rescue Rightmire out of the truck. When they found him, he was partially ejected from his truck and pinned underneath the truck and up against the ravine face.

“The rescue we knew it was going to be extremely technical, it was going to be a challenge to get him out,” Cook said. “None of us had even seen someone in such a precarious position.”

A medical helicopter was called at 8 p.m. Monday where he was later flown to EIRMC. There was no cell phone coverage in the area.

Rightmire describes his injuries as having “a lot of bruises” on his right side, because that’s what a lot of the weight was on from his truck. He also has suffered from a broken clavicle. Rightmire says that it is difficult to get up and walk, but he can do it.

He mentions that there has been some progress in his healing, saying that three days ago there was a lot of swelling in his right hand. However, he still has no feeling in his right arm, but hopes that once the swelling goes down even more that there might be some movement back in it.

Rightmire also says that he still has some mud on him because it hurts right now to clean him off in some areas, including behind his ear.

“I had a huge stick, that was in the dirt, and a bunch of little ones that I was fighting with the whole time that I was up there,” Rightmire said. “Either balancing my head on for a little bit to keep it out of the water or I was fighting with them to get them to a different spot so they weren’t digging into my head. It just ended up scratching the hell out of my backside.”

Rightmire describes the worst pain was when he put his ankle up into the windshield, trying to support himself up out of the water.

“I could feel it like strip away layers of skin as I was pulling,” Rightmire explains. “It was either do something to keep my head out of the water or just give up and shove it all the way in.”

He jokes the thing that kept him going was not wanting to leave his dog, Cooper, at home all alone.

EIRMC spokeswoman Jessica Clements says that Rightmire will be released soon.

Rightmire and Goforth say they are very thankful to Cook and Hardy for saving, keep him calm and stick beside him the entire time.

“They are a big reason that he made it out okay,” Goforth said. “I couldn’t be anymore grateful for them.”