RELATED: You can see pictures from her ordeal by following this link.
Unbelievably, 76-year-old Mary Davis was discovered in her Pemberton garage Tuesday morning essentially folded in half stuck inside a 25-gallon plastic recycling bucket. Police say the arthritic widow was knocked off balance by her dog, Dusty, and fell backside first into the can, trapping her.
"She said she had been in there for 2 days and she was really weak."
Neighbor and longtime family friend Michele Ayala had been concerned about not seeing or hearing from Mrs. Davis for several days. So was the woman's old friend Ruth Woodson.
"Today I just got up this morning. I couldn't get her so I said I dug myself out and I said let me go see if I can find her."
The concern deepened when the widow's daughter called from Missouri this morning saying she couldn't contact her mother.
Michele called police and headed to the house on Villanova Avenue, with a key, but all the outside doors were locked.
That's when her 14-year-old son Kazon shimmied through a dog door to open the garage.
"And there she was feet and hands sticking in the air with a little voice that called out, she says I'm here, I'm here and I went and got blankets," Michele said.
Mary Davis was pulled out of the bucket "responsive and happy" and rushed to Virtua Memorial Hospital. How did she survive in the bitter cold? Michele says its may have to do with how Mrs. Davis pampered her dog Dusty. She keeps a heater in the garage for her dog, or she might have frozen to death.
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