An Indiana mother whose family feared she was kidnapped after she mysteriously vanished while their home was on fire was found over a week later in the woods, a few miles away from the property.
Britney Gard, 46, had been missing for eight days before she was found alive on Wednesday and taken to a hospital.
The mom was rescued after she called authorities, “requesting assistance finding her way out of a wooded area” just 2.5 miles away from her home, according to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office.
Gard went missing on Sept. 30 and was reported missing after she failed to show up at her daughter’s volleyball game the following day.
Her 13-year-old daughter hitched a ride back home after her match, only to find swaths of authorities waiting to inform her they couldn’t locate her mother.
Gard left everything behind, including her purse and car.
Adding to the mystery, firefighters responded to reports of a small fire at the home the day after she disappeared, but no one was on the property at the time.
A search party led by Gard’s four sisters covering a 35-mile radius around Indianapolis quickly ensued, but no one found any signs of the missing mom.
“Who took her?” Gard’s sister Stephanie Bowen asked on WRTV on Monday.
“I feel like there’s something here bigger that we don’t know and someone knows something.”
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said that they aren’t currently looking for any persons of interest and assured there is “no current threat to the general public.”
But how exactly Gard ended up in the woods and where she was for the last eight days remains a mystery.
“No one knows what happened. No one knows how she got there. No one knows what happened,” her family told WTWO.
But the family is just thankful Gard is safe.
“It feels great. It’s a relief. Feel joy that she’s alive and with us,” they told the outlet.
It’s unclear what type of injuries Gard was being treated for, if any.
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