A lone survivor from a tragic plane crash is a 7-year-old girl. The girl had walked through the woods in the dark to get some help. She arrived at Larry Wilkins' doorstep, bloodied and shaking.
"When I answered the door, there was a bloody girl. She told me that her parents were dead, and she had been in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down," Wilkins said. He took Sailor into his home and attended to her wounds. Wilkins called 911 and Sailor was taken to a nearby hospital to get checked and treated.
Wilkins said that Sailor did well at her age. She was brave enough to walk for more than a mile in a dense forest in the night all by herself. He also stated that what he did was something anyone would have done.
"She's just a little girl who needed some help. I just pray for that little girl ... She's going to need a lot of help. I just can't imagine someone that young going through that, especially to witness it -- to witness her parents dying. It's amazing that she held up as good as she did," Wilkins said.
Sailor told Wilkins what had happened and that when she tried to wake up her parents after the crash, "they wouldn't wake up."
Sailor was travelling on their Piper PA-34 plane with her mom, dad, sister, and cousin when it crashed in Western Kentucky last Friday. Her parents Kimberly and Marty Gutzler, her sister Piper, 9, and cousin Sierra Wilder, 14, died on the spot, according to local police. The family was bound to Mount Vernon, Illinois coming from Florida.
"She indicated to us that she believed her family was deceased but that she hoped they were just sleeping. I was literally just struck by how calm she was able to be and the ability for her to give us this information," Kentucky Police Lt. Brent White said.
Sailor suffered minor injuries, including a broken bone in her wrist and scratches on her legs. She was released from the hospital on Saturday, according to state police.
