Real Name: Unknown at broadcast
Case: Lost Rescuer
Location: Immokalee, Florida
Date: August 27, 1995
Case[]
Details: On August 27, 1995, Steve and Cheron Newton's first child, Virginia, was born at Naples Community Hospital in Naples, Florida. Steve had come straight there from work the night before. At 2pm, he was riding home on his motorcycle to get the family car on the highway near Immokalee. Over the previous week, there had been several thunderstorms, but by that day they had ended. However, there were still several dangerous patches of water along the road. Steve hit one of them and was thrown from his motorcycle several feet from the road. He landed face down in a drainage ditch and was knocked unconscious. He would have died had it not been for an unknown woman who arrived, pulled him from the ditch, and saved him from drowning.
The next thing Steve remembered was the woman looking at him and asking if he was all right. She brought him to her car, sat him down, and waited until the paramedics arrived. One noted that he was hyperventilating and disoriented. The woman explained what had happened. The paramedics then took him away. The woman gave the police a statement and then left without leaving her name.
Twenty minutes later, Steve was taken to the same hospital where Virginia had been born hours earlier. He feared that he was going to die, and told the doctors to tell Cheron that he was sorry. However, he was saved, thanks to the woman and the doctors that treated him. A year later, he is on disability and suffers from occasional seizures, but without the mysterious woman, he would not be alive today. He and Cheron want to find and thank her for saving his life.
Extra Notes: This case first aired on the November 15, 1996 episode.
Tammy and Steve reunited
Results: Solved. On the night of the broadcast, a woman recognized the story as one told by a coworker, Immokalee resident Tammy Dotson. She then called the telecenter on December 19, 1996. Coincidentally, Steve's father-in-law and her boyfriend are both employed at the Hendry Correctional Institute. They connected and passed her information to him, who immediately called her. She was overjoyed to learn that he had tried so much to find and thank her.
On January 31, 1997, Steve and Tammy were reunited and he brought Virginia with him. Later that day, they went back to the accident scene to go through what they remembered that day. Now, he and Cheron have a second daughter, who would've never been born if it hadn't been for Tammy saving his life.
Links:
- Steve Newton on Unsolved Archive
- Steve Newton Update on Unsolved Archive
- TV show helps locate man's good Samaritan - January 1, 1997