Seven- Year-Old Girl Survives Plane Crash
BLITZER: We're following a truly remarkable survival story in western Kentucky where a little 7-year-old girl not only lived through a plane crash that killed her parents, her sister and her cousin. She walked nearly a mile through dense woods to get help. The wreckage is being moved to help investigators figure out what exactly happened. Let's bring in CNN's Martin Savidge. He's near the crash site for us in Kentucky. What have you learned, Martin?</s>MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we're talking about 7-year- old Sailor Gutzler. And this is the door and the stairs that she walked up to to get help. Let me show you over here. This is the remote part of Kentucky and the woods from which she emerged after that horrible crash of her family plane. How she got from there to here is nothing short of miraculous.</s>SAVIDGE (voice-over): Behind this precious face lies the incredible strength and courage of a survivor. Friday night, 7-year-old Sailor Gutzler freed herself from the upside-down wreckage of her family's plane, moving past the bodies of her mother, father, sister and cousin, walking nearly a mile to Larry Wilkins' home in remote western Kentucky.</s>LARRY WILKINS, FOUND CRASH SURVIVOR: Well, she was bloody. Her nose was bloody. I can't say for sure, but I think maybe her lip might have been cut. But her little legs was what really got your attention, because they were striped up all over.</s>SAVIDGE: From his back steps, Wilkins shows me the way she came. Even now, he still can't believe she made it, shoeless, wearing only shorts and short sleeves with temperatures in the 30s.</s>WILKINS: When you consider what she just walked through and she had just seen her parents and her sister and her cousin, that all three were dead, you know, was amazing.</s>SAVIDGE: I decided to backtrack the way she came. (on camera): Pretty quickly I find the going is tough, downed tree limbs everywhere. (voice-over): The brush is incredibly dense and overgrown, branches snag and grab as you move, while needle-like thorns tear at your clothes. Even in broad daylight, the potential pitfalls are everywhere. Steep and slippery slopes, ditches and pools of water. The brush swallows you quickly, leaving you disoriented and blocking the view of any landmarks. As I struggle, I constantly remind myself, I was ready for this. How could an injured, traumatized and frightened 7-year-old make her way in the near pitch dark and chilling mist? In the end, I give up, and GPS guides me back to where I started. Larry Wilkins says one wrong turn could have left the little girl lost for weeks.</s>WILKINS: All woods. And there's quite a few coyotes around here, too.</s>SAVIDGE: He believes the light in his yard could have attracted the little survivor, or something else, telling me, heaven had a hand, as well.</s>SAVIDGE: Wolf, there are so many ways that this could have gone wrong for this little girl. First and foremost, we should point out, this is primarily a vacation area. There's a lake nearby. People come here in the summer. In the winter, I'm told only three homes are occupied. It just so happened she walked up to one of them -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: How's she doing? I know she had some injuries. How's she doing right now, Martin?</s>SAVIDGE: Larry Wilkins, the man inside the home here, obviously feels a very strong connection -- He's 71 -- to this 7-year-old child. The grandfather called him last night and said she's doing about as good as can be expected. She is in the hands of family and being cared for, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: What a miraculous story, I must say. All right, Martin, thanks very, very much. Martin Savidge on the scene for us. Coming up, a new blast from North Korea because of the punishment President Obama ordered for its cyberattack on Sony Pictures. Will its harsh words lead to dangerous actions? And right at the top of the hour, the search is now set to resume for the wreckage of that AirAsia jetliner. Can they find the plane's black boxes before the batteries on their locater beacons give out?