(As originally publishedĀ with bells and whistles, Wed, January 18th 2023, 8:34 PM EST)
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (TND) ā A woman with a history of being rescued from storm drains was pulled from another one on Wednesday. It was Lyndsey Jane Kennedy’s third storm drain in just under two years.
Delray Beach police in Florida said the latest call came at noon. A witness reported someone possibly in distress while swimming in a canal.
Officers and firefighters arrived rushed to the scene and asked Kennedy, who they didnāt recognize, if she needed help.
They didnāt get a response.
According to police, āShe ignored them and climbed into a storm drain pipe. The woman refused to come out and began crawling farther into the culvert pipe, which crossed under Lindell Boulevard.
Apparently, a rescue attempt became trying to catch Kennedy.
Firefighters said they contained her between two sections of pipe. Then, special operations team members from Delray Beach Fire Rescue used a ladder and rescue harness to get her out.
They said Kennedy appeared to have minor injuries. Paramedics treated her and then took her āto the hospital for further evaluation.ā
Kennedy had a brush with another storm drainĀ in Delray Beach in March 2021.
Police saidĀ the story she told themĀ started with her swimming in a canal near her boyfriend’s house and seeing a doorway near a shallow part of the canal. She entered it, noticed a tunnel, and followed it out of curiosity.
She told police the tunnel led to another tunnel and so on, until she realized she was lost.
Long story short, Kennedy told police sheād been walking around the sewer system forĀ the three weeks she was missing.
She told them she lived off an unopened can of ginger ale she found while looking for a way out to the surface.
Family members said Kennedy attended a Bible study group with her mom before she disappeared. They learned about the prophet Elijah (not Jonah!) taking a journey and said she wrote a note to her mom, telling her she planned to go on her own journey. Still, relatives said they didn’t believe her journey was meant to take her into a storm drain.
Kennedy was listed as “endangered” on the sheriff’s office’s missing personās documentation, and a detective wrote in the report, āShe has gone missing under similar circumstances on 4/27/2020.ā
The next storm drain incidentĀ for Kennedy took place two months later ā in May 2021 ā in Texas.
Police in Grand Prairie, between Dallas and Fort Worth, reported searching for Kennedy for four days. That search ended when her mom and best friend found her at a canal.
Her family told WPEC Kennedy wandered off after checking into a rehab facility. That best friend, Brady Morgan, said police spotted Kennedy near a creek but when they approached, she slipped into a nearby storm drain.
It was a tracking app on Kennedy’s cellphone that led her family to her last location before she disappeared underground and in the meantime, family and friends dropped bags of food and Gatorade into area manholes.
Kennedy made news again in Florida, but for a different reason.
She was arrested for hit and run in July 2021. Palm Beach County sheriffās deputies said she ran from the crash scene to an apartment complex, but the staff there led them to her.
Authorities said her injured passenger told them they were making a beer run but Kennedy ran from a gas station, saying she stole the beer, and sped off, nearly hitting the store clerk who chased her outside. The crash with another car happened after running several red lights.
The passenger said Kennedy ran because she didnāt have a driverās license. It turned out, hers had been suspended 17 times from 2007 to 2020.
