EASTON — Police waded about 50 feet through thick brush and knee-deep mud Monday to rescue a Stoughton woman who was heard screaming for help inside Borderland State Park after she had been missing for a week, officials said Wednesday.
Three Easton police officers trudged through the muck and underbrush after 6 p.m. to find 31-year-old Emma Tetewsky, who was reported missing June 26, lying in the fetal position, authorities said during a news conference at Easton police headquarters.
After a couple of failed rescue attempts, the officers were able to carry Tetewsky back to dry land where she told them her name, and they confirmed that she was the missing Stoughton woman, according to Easton police Officer Jason Wheeler, one of the rescuers.
“We’re just fortunate that she’s back with her family,” Wheeler said.
Stoughton Police Chief Donna M. McNamara said she had spoken with Tetewsky’s father Tuesday and he expressed “relief that she’s doing better.”
“She did suffer some injuries, and she’s healing from that right now,” McNamara said.
On Monday evening, police were alerted to a woman screaming for help inside the park. The three officers spoke to park rangers who led them to the location where Tetewsky’s cries were heard, where they could hear her voice but not see her, according to Easton police Officer Corey McLaughlin, another rescuer.
When the officers reached Tetewsky, she told them she was in pain in her upper body and didn’t want to be moved, Wheeler said.
The officers initially tried to lift Tetewsky but found that her additional body weight caused them to sink deeper into the mud, McLaughlin said.
“We then had to kind of change tactics and form a line where we eventually moved her out as a team without kind of burying ourselves,” he said.
McLaughlin said Tetewsky told police she had been trapped in the park for three days, and “her condition appeared like she had been there three days — disheveled and what have you.”
Wheeler said Tetewsky looked dehydrated and “pruny,” as if she had been in the water a long time. He said Tetewsky did not have a cellphone with her, and it was “extremely incredible” that she had survived in the park for days.
McLaughlin said he could not speculate how or why Tetewsky ended up where she was found, but said “it was clear to see how someone was stuck there.”
“Just from our own body weights, we sunk pretty deeply,” he said. “And never mind if you were there for days. I imagine it would be extremely difficult to get out on your own.”
McLaughlin said Tetewsky had gone down a path that does not allow horses or mountain bikes, which are permitted elsewhere in the park. The trail is “very overgrown and difficult to get to,” he said.
Tetewsky was reported missing June 26 after her family had not seen her since the previous evening at her Stoughton home. Residents saw her the evening of June 26 in the Lakewood Drive area, police said.
It is unclear how she wound up in Borderland State Park, roughly 7 miles from her home in the Mill Street area in Stoughton.
On Wednesday afternoon, the park was quiet, with few hikers on the Pond Edge Trail near where Tetewsky was found. The path was canopied by tall trees with prominent signs indicating the points where paths split. The trail was mostly made up of dry dirt, but to the side there was muddier, wetter terrain visible, and the croaking of wildlife could be heard.
The 1,850-acre park is a well-known hiking area, with more than 20 miles of trails and unpaved roads that wind around three main ponds and several smaller ones. The wooded carriage road looping around Leach Pond is mostly flat, but other trails are hilly and can be more difficult to traverse. A list of suggested hikes published by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation cautions that “some trails are not well marked.”
The park is home to the Ames Mansion, a 20-room stone edifice built around 1910 that was featured in the film “Knives Out,” and the historic Smith Farmhouse, constructed in 1880 by Dr. Asahel Smith, a “clairvoyant healer” who used herbal medicines and wanted a tranquil place for his patients.
Easton police have been called to the park many times to help with searches, Wheeler said, and the department owns an ATV “mostly for Borderland.”
Park officials encouraged visitors to take common-sense precautions such as bringing cellphones with them to the park, notifying family and friends of their plans, and staying on marked hiking trails.
“This park is surrounded by residential areas, so it’s luckily rare that anybody ever goes missing,” Park Supervisor Andrew Buckley said in an interview. “And the vast, vast majority of missing persons, they usually rectify within the hour of anybody reported missing.”
Correspondent Alex Koller contributed to this report.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.