Less than a mile from his house, a Tennessee biker who went missing while en route to get McDonald’s breakfast managed to survive for over three days in a ditch when he drifted off the road.
Taylor Boyle, 27, had been gone since Tuesday, when a group of devoted friends found him concealed among shrubs and trees at the base of a 15-foot embankment close to Heiskell, a village about 12 miles northwest of Knoxville.
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office said that Boyle was last heard from on Sunday morning after being reported missing earlier that day. According to Boyle’s buddies, he was stopping at McDonald’s before they were supposed to meet at one of their nearby homes.
Families and friends who had searched the region earlier that day without much success decided to go back in honor of their lost comrade.
“When I looked down in there, I didn’t see him at first and as I was panning out, I saw something sparkle — basically just saw the light reflect. And when I did, I looked back and I just saw the Harley wheel,” friend Brandon Lawson told 10 News.
Boyle lay in a ditch a few feet from the broken blue motorcycle, where he had supposedly spent the previous sixty hours when the bike crashed into a tree.
The rider had a concussion, which prevented him from seeing the hazardous conditions, but he was conscious and conversing.
“He had guardian angels with him as he only thought he had been there for an hour camping with his dad,” Boyle’s sister-in-law wrote on Facebook.
Boyle was rushed to the hospital with a dislocated elbow, concussion and small brain bleed, with doctors saying he has a “long road to recovery.”
According to Boyle’s friends, a McDonald’s biscuit Boyle had picked up for one of his friends was still wrapped inside his backpack when he was rescued.
“All I was worried about doing was just finding him. Anything and everything that we had to do, as long as it took. We just had to find him, I knew he was out there,” said Ryan French.
