Just after Alastair Cass stormed out of his house because his football team lost he become a hero for a woman in dire need of a win—to save her life.
The 40-year-old left home in “frustration” after his beloved Arsenal team was hammered by Brighton 3-0.
When he got outside, he heard a woman’s cries for help from the valley behind his house in Devon, England.
She had become stuck in mud up to her chest and couldn’t move for four hours.
“Thanks to Arsenal for being rubbish at football!” she exclaimed in a card thanking him for saving her.
Alastair raced down with his 4-wheeled ATV with planks and rope to secure her until emergency services arrived in Chulmleigh, and workers dragged her to safety.
“Just due to the game and how it went was the only reason why I stepped out the house, as I’d had enough!” the business owner told SWNS news.
“If it went differently I would have stayed and watched post-match interviews and so on, but luckily that wasn’t the case on this day!”
Alastair, who runs his own vintage restoration business called UK Restoration, recalled hearing a curious sound coming from across the valley.
“As I live on a 150-acre property, you do hear things now and then, but I was walking over to one of my barns and I heard the same noise again and was like ‘something’s up’.
“I jumped on the quad bike and started to head down to the river and then heard it again, and kept going down and that was when I could finally hear the word ‘help’ clearly.”
He started looking for her, driving around and stopping telling her to speak again and again.
“It’s such an unkempt and dangerous area to go in. But I eventually came across her, down a ditch, stuck in mud up to her chest line, shivering.
“I swore when I saw her because I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing after living here for 28 years.”
Alastair found Sallie at 5:00pm, and raced back home to gather rope and wooden boards so he could spread his weight across the mud hole.
“I attempted to get her out, but the suction of the mud was just incredible and the painful noises she gave off when I was pulling her meant I just had to abandon it.”
Alastair told Sallie he’d drive back to the house and call emergency services, as there was no signal where she was trapped.
First on the scene was the Chulmleigh fire brigade, followed by specialist teams, South Molton police, boat rescue service, four ambulance crews and multiple helicopters.
But just getting the emergency crews down into the gully was a big task.
“I had to make multiple trips up and down whilst showing them each time where she was on the other side of the ditch and carrying the equipment to her.”
The intense rescue operation took two hours—and Sallie was eventually freed.
She summed it up in her thank-you card: “I have never been so happy to see another human being as I was you that day!”
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