Officials detail “risky rescue” of missing Stoughton woman who says she was stuck in mud for 3 days

EASTON, Mass. — It took teamwork and a couple of tries, but three Easton police officers managed to both rescue a woman from a pool of deep mud -- and solve a missing person case.

Monday, Patrolmen Jason Wheeler, Corey McLaughlin and Andrew Stanton responded to a call from two hikers at Borderland State Park. Those hikers reported hearing a woman yelling for help.

The park ranger helped police locate Emma Tetewsky, a 31-year-old Stoughton woman who had been missing for a week.

“We didn’t really know what we were dealing with,” said McLaughlin. “A lot of times in this job you don’t.”

What they were dealing with was a life-or-death mess.

“It was about 50 feet in,” McLaughlin said. “We were about knee-deep in mud. When we saw her lying there, we did initially attempt to pick her up. The weight of her, on top of our bodies, sunk us further.”

Tetewsky told the officers she’d been trapped in the mud for three days. The patrolmen soon found out why she had such trouble getting out.

“I fell in, could hardly get up,” Wheeler said. “There was a little tree where I could grab it to try to get myself back up.”

The officers thought about using an ice-rescue technique, in which a frisbee-like object attached to ropes is tossed towards the person in distress and they’re hauled in. But the mud proved too deep.

“She said that she was in pain,” recalled Wheeler. “That she didn’t want to be moved. So we tried to come up with a plan on how we were going to grab her and get her out of here.”

They wound up forming a line to gradually get Tetewsky out -- something that minimized their own chances of getting sucked into the mud. It was a success.

The officers brought Tetewsky up to a trail.

“She just looked very dehydrated,” Wheeler said. “When you’ve been in the water a long time you get pruny. So she looked like she’d been in the water a long time.”

Three Easton firefighters -- Tony Ioannidis and Captains Larry Bly and Timothy Vamosi -- took on the next task of getting Tetewsky out of the woods and to a hospital. All things considered, they said she seemed to be in pretty good shape, given her ordeal.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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