For 3 days, stranded paraplegic crawled 6km

A paraplegic man who says he was stranded in the New Mexico desert without his wheelchair dragged himself 6km down a dirt road for three days before a motorist stopped to help him.

Tattered and dirty, Ricky Gilmore’s jeans told part of the story and his body the rest — the skin on his left leg and buttocks shredded, a wrist sprained, and his kidneys in bad shape from going without food and water.

“Ah man, I’m just a big mess. I ache and I’m just in the first stages of healing,” he said from his hospital bed at the Northern Navajo Medical Centre in Shiprock, New Mexico.