Angela Bussell and Kimberly Pushard sit in Maine game warden Brad Richard’s truck after he found them on a backcountry road days after the women left home on a shopping trip and wound up lost, traveling through multiple states.
Angela Bussell and Kimberly Pushard sit in Maine game warden Brad Richard’s truck after he found them on a backcountry road days after the women left home on a shopping trip and wound up lost, traveling through multiple states.
Brad Richard stared at it — the red Jeep Compass SUV everyone had been pursuing for days. As the high temperature of the day flirted with 15 degrees on the backcountry logging road, the Maine game warden steeled himself for what he thought he was about to find: two women who had frozen to death as law enforcement officers in three states desperately searched for them.
Still, Richard twice called out “Hello! Game warden!” as he prepared to trudge toward what he assumed was a snow-covered crypt. Instead, one of the doors swung open in what seemed like slow motion — Kimberly Pushard popped her head out.
“Kim?” Richard asked.
“How do you know my name?” she responded.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he said.
So ended a four-day search involving a slew of law enforcement agencies that used airplanes, helicopters and snowmobiles to cast about for Pushard, 51, and her longtime friend Angela Bussell, 50. Over those four days, the odds of finding them alive dwindled. Overnight temperatures dropped to 15 below. A storm dumped 6 inches of snow on the area. The women had run out of food, water and — when they used all the gas in their SUV — heat.
In the second day of the search, Topsham Police Chief Marc Hagan didn’t mince words when he asked for the public’s help in finding the two women, who both have intellectual disabilities.
“We’re very concerned,” Hagan said Friday at a news conference. “We had the snowstorm yesterday. The temperatures have dropped. At this point, our level of anxiety is high.”
For eight-plus hours, Richard zipped around logging roads on his snowmobile in his search for Pushard and Bussell.
Maine Warden Service
Pushard and Bussell’s trip was supposed to be short, uneventful and include bowling. On Feb. 21, the two friends set off from the Topsham area, planning to go to the Maine Mall in Portland, some 30 miles south. Instead, they overshot Portland and dipped into Massachusetts before crossing north into New Hampshire.
When they were in Massachusetts later on Feb. 21, the women called family members to get directions, Hagan said. They were spotted in Exeter, New Hampshire, where they had multiple interactions with law enforcement officers, who at the time were unaware of the danger the women were in. Their family members formally reported them missing to Topsham police early on Feb. 22.
Pushard’s older sister, Rhonda Cromwell, told the Portland Press Herald that Pushard had never ventured beyond the roughly 10-mile stretch near her home, though she had been driving for some 30 years.
About 10 a.m. on the day after they had left home, the women were spotted hundreds of miles away — on the other side of the Topsham area — in Springfield, Maine, where they filled up the SUV with $25 worth of gas and asked the clerk for directions.
Video footage showed them in Lincoln about a half-hour later; other footage showed them heading south on a highway a few minutes after that. Before it died, Pushard’s phone last pinged off a cell tower near Burlington, which would guide search efforts for the next four days.
Then, nothing. No more pings from the cellphone or surveillance footage, Richard said.
“It was literally like they went poof,” he said. “They were gone.”
Over the next four days, Maine authorities rallied. The state’s forest service sent up airplanes. The Maine Warden Service, part of the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, sent up its helicopter. Trucks and snowmobiles scoured hundreds of square miles on the ground.
Richard came to the search late. On Sunday, four days after Pushard and Bussell had been reported missing, he was tasked with driving a snowmobile across two tracts of forestland that timber companies harvest. For eight-plus hours, he zipped around logging roads on his snowmobile, using GPS to ensure he didn’t miss one or retrace roads he had already checked.
Pushard, 51, and Bussell, 50, were stuck in this red Jeep Compass SUV for four days after they got lost in the Maine backcountry.
Maine Warden Service
By 3:30 p.m., Richard had driven some 90 miles, covering 50,000 acres. Searching one of the final sections, he noticed what he thought might be tire tracks. It was hard to tell. The machines that groom snowmobile trails in Maine create hard surfaces. Plus, a fresh blanket of about 6 inches of snow had fallen a couple nights earlier, further obscuring any tracks that may have been underneath.
Still, Richard decided to follow the faint depression. After about a half-mile, he came around the corner and saw it.
“The vehicle completely covered in snow,” he said.
Richard saw no movement inside. He stopped his snowmobile a few hundred feet from the SUV and shut it off. Before dismounting to check things out, Richard took a moment. He prepared himself for the discovery of two bodies — women who had run out of food, water and heat before slowly freezing to death.
He also thought of what he would have to do no matter what he found — and all the resources that would kick into gear once he sounded the alarm.
“Your heart just sinks because you don’t think, or certainly I didn’t think, these ladies made it,” he said.
Then he hollered toward the SUV and was surprised when Pushard swung open a door and hollered back.
His dread snapped into astonishment.
“When Kim opened the door, I’m pretty sure if someone threw a toothpick at me, they could have pushed me off my snowmobile,” he said.
Although the women had snacks at the start of their trip, they had long since run out. They had no water. The only food or drink remaining was a half-filled two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, frozen solid. He gave them what remained of his lunch: trail mix, granola bars, chips and water. Then, he told them he would have to leave but not to worry: He would return with help.
“Well,” Bussell told him, “hurry up.”
Richard drove back out a ways to get cell service. When that didn’t work, he used his radio to contact dispatch and hailed a couple other game wardens. A nearby resident let them use his off-road utility vehicle, which had a heated cab. They returned to the SUV and loaded both women inside it.
Eventually, Pushard and Bussell were taken to Penobscot Valley Hospital. Richard said that, aside from being cold, hungry and thirsty, they were “essentially fine.”
