A Louisville woman reported missing on Saturday found herself trapped in the trunk of her daughter’s Mazda 48 hours later with no clue how she got there. Dangerously dehydrated and struggling to breathe, Aundrea Stone furiously pounded on the car from her dark prison.
That’s when two women walking through a church parking lot Monday afternoon heard the noise.
“We heard a ‘thump, a thump, thump,'” Tiasha Chaplin told Wave3 News. “We thought it was a prank.”
Chaplin and a friend called 911. And when police didn’t respond quickly enough, Chaplin threw a brick through a passenger window and popped the trunk.
Stone, 44, was hospitalized with “massive swelling and pain,” according to the family after Louisville Metro police said she was kidnapped Saturday from a pit stop she frequented, Jay’s Food Mart in Newburg, Ky. Stone said when she got back in the car a man was waiting inside.
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Police are seeking a white male in his 30s a with hoodie and “looking somewhat scraggly.” The man claimed to have a weapon. Stone said the man forced her to drive him around Kentucky and Indiana for two days.
A family friend said Stone has no memory of what happened. She is believed to have suffered a blow to the head.
“Aundrea has suffered a tremendous trauma and through the love of family and friends look to face the long road to physical and spiritual recovery,” the family said in a statement, according to WLKY. “Aundrea is progressively regaining her memory of her horrific ordeal and is working diligently and bravely with the local authorities to ascertain all that has happened and with prayer and hard work apprehend the person behind this crime.”
Church pastor Carl Fletcher said the family grew concerned when Stone didn’t show up Friday to pick her daughter up from class. She was reported missing the next day.
“She’s alive, that’s hallelujah time, let’s put it that way,” Rev. Carla Blevins, a family friend of Aundrea Stone, told WDRB.
jmolinet@nydailynews.com Follow on Twitter @jmolinet
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