St. Louis – Ashley Reeves had been lying in the woods for more than 30 hours by the time searchers spotted her through the driving rain. The 17-year-old was covered with insect bites, her neck was broken, and investigators were sure she was dead – until she took a breath.
A day earlier, authorities now believe, a high school teacher tried to kill her.
“It was almost disbelief that she was still alive,” investigator Steve Johnson of the St. Clair County, Ill., Sheriff’s Department, said Tuesday.
Searchers had to cut down brush and trees to get a stretcher to the girl, then rushed her to a hospital in St. Louis, where she was in serious condition Tuesday.
Johnson is now helping build a case against the 26-year-old teacher and wannabe pro wrestler, Samson Shelton, who is jailed in lieu of $1 million bail and charged with kidnapping and attempted murder.
Authorities have said Reeves and Shelton had a “relationship,” though Johnson wouldn’t elaborate.
The investigator would only describe Shelton as a known acquaintance of Reeves and say that Shelton was with investigators early Saturday when they finally found her in a desolate area in the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Ill. She had been missing since leaving her home Thursday afternoon for a job interview.
Shelton was a driver’s-ed teacher by day in tiny Freeburg, Ill., and a pro wrestler and country line dancer by night, authorities said.
