Woman in Power Chair Falls into Ditch

Banged up, badly bruised, and bloodied, a 77-year-old woman lies on a stretcher as medics pull her out of a ditch.

Velma Shoemaker's daughter, Jackie Scholtz frantically watched as her mother was raced away to the hospital.

"I heard her screaming at us, and I'm going 'Mama where are you? Where are you?'" Scholtz says. "And I knew then that she was down in that ditch." 

Years of injuries have left Shoemaker confined to a powerchair. As she was riding to her favorite spot in the front yard, she came downhill and lost control.

Her daughter tells us the chair has no brakes.

"Iknow it scared her to death going down that hill there," Scholtz says. "She knew where she was headed. She knew those rocks were there. She was headed for a fall."

Shoemaker fell 6 feet, hitting her head on a giant rock. Fortunately she fell beside, not beneath the 200 pound chair.

"I thought for God it was on top of her. I just knew it was on top of her," Scholtz says, crying. "They weigh too much to be on top of you."

Medics rushed Shoemaker to Erlanger with head injuries. Shoemaker was conscious and alert at the time and told her daughter she tried to get the wheelchair to stop, but it wouldn't.

It eventually took three or four men with ropes to finally pull the chair out of the ditch.

Shoemaker says they've never thought about putting up a fence but they will now: It's either that, or move.

"If me and the neighbors hadn't have heard her scream, she'd still be laying there," Scholtz says. "She'd probably have died there."