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US postal worker Cissy Cartwright hailed hero after saving Alabama pensioner trapped in his home for over a week

Tommy Hope was forced to lay on his back for 10 days

Kashmira Gander
Thursday 23 July 2015 08:23 EDT
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A postal service worker has rescued an injured man trapped for over a week
A postal service worker has rescued an injured man trapped for over a week (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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A postal worker from Alabama has been hailed a hero, after post piling up at a home on her route led her to saving a pensioner who had been trapped for over a week.

Cissy Cartwright, who has worked for the US Postal Service in Hope Hull for two decades, became concerned when she noticed that 66-year-old Tommy Hope hadn’t checked his mailbox for several days, Post Master Sherry Hughes told local broadcasterWSFA.

After Hope fell and broke his arm and injured his hip, he was forced to slide on his back to drink from a bucket of rainwater, and eat ice, frozen berries and juice from his freezer in order to survive.

Cartwright found the pensioner on the floor, where he’d been 10 ten days.

She told reporters that she was “in shock” but “relieved” that she’d found him. Hope is now recovering in hospital.

“He calls me his hero, and if that's what he wants to say, I'm good with it. But I don't feel like a hero. I was just at the right place at the right time,” she said.

The incident comes after a 75-year-old woman who crashed her car into a ravine survived for three days, despite suffering a fractured back, WFAA reported.

Wanda Mobley told the local broadcaster that she sustained herself by drinking from a bottle of lemonade.

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