A Mississippi woman, missing since Friday morning, has been found
Published 11:55 pm Saturday, August 19, 2023
At about 7 a.m. Saturday morning, dispatchers from Adams County E-911 contacted sheriff’s deputies and let them know they were receiving an SOS signal from a cell phone located somewhere in the area of Cranfield, said Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten.
“Dispatch and patrol deputies worked in a coordinated effort to track the location of the SOS and began searching for the signal’s origin,” Patten said.
At approximately 9:15 a.m., deputies were able to locate Gloveling Stean Graves Small, 68, in a heavily wooded area off of Winding Road in Cranfield.
“Mrs. Small has a condition that impairs her judgment and she drove to Natchez from Indianola overnight and ended up off the roadway deep into the wood line on Winding Road,” the sheriff said.
Small had wandered away from her vehicle.
“These patrol deputies did an outstanding job locating Mrs. Small on the scene. They used technology and the skills they learned through law enforcement training to track her down deep in the wood line and were able to locate her car,” Patten said.
“AMR ambulance was called to the scene and Mrs. Small is receiving medical treatment,” he said. “Her family was called and they have arrived here in Natchez.”
The sheriff said Small was located approximately a 20-minute hike away from her vehicle.
Small’s family reported her missing at about 10 a.m. Friday to the Indianola Police Department. They contacted the auto dealership from which Small purchased her vehicle and were working to track the GPS on the vehicle.
“They started heading in this direction, tracking the vehicle’s GPS, not knowing my deputies were working to track the SOS signal from the cell phone,” Patten said.
“I can’t say enough about the job the deputies did. This is the second incident recently where an individual has been lost in a heavily wooded area. In this particular case, the search was done strictly by patrol deputies who were determined to find Mrs. Small. They searched for two hours before finding her,” the sheriff said. “They did an outstanding job locating her to preserve her life.”
