A disabled man missing for more than 18 hours was found in a swampy creek near a local vineyard Wednesday morning.

Hank Alvin Dutton, 65, of Georgia Highway 46, was found waist deep in the waters of Lower Lotts Creek behind Meinhardt Vineyards around 9:30 a.m., said Bulloch County Sheriff Lynn Anderson.

At home less than an hour after his rescue, Dutton was cracking jokes, smoking a cigarette and sipping on Powerade as visitors expressed gratitude that he survived the ordeal.

He said he was exploring a trail off Kennedy Pond Road, "looking for a pond to go fishing," when he unexpectedly drove into the creek, hidden by tall grass. "My car (a white Mazda Navajo SUV) just fell off (into the creek). I was hunting a good fishing hole."

The SUV began filling with water, and Dutton called his employee, Ronald Morris, to get him to bring a skid loader to pull him out. A few phone calls later to Morris and Dutton's wife, Sylvia, and it was still unclear where Dutton could be located.

During the last phone call, Morris "could hear water rushing into the car," Sylvia Dutton said Tuesday night as she waited at home, the search postponed until morning. After that, calls to Dutton's phone went unanswered.

Hank Dutton recalled the night's events as he sat on his couch Wednesday, holding warm wet cloths to his forehead.
As the Navajo sank, he climbed out and "piled up on some logs" in the creek, he said. But then he fell off into the creek. His phone had gotten wet. He hung it on a tree to dry, but it fell into the water again and was lost.
"I couldn't get up the bank," he said.

Dutton uses a cane to walk, having been crushed and seriously injured more than 20 years ago in a work-related accident in Atlanta.

"I found a stick and walked a ways until it broke," he said.

He picked another stick and continued walking along the swampy blackwater creek, a few miles southeast of the intersection of Highway 46 and U.S. Highway 301 South, "trying to work my way out. When that sun went down, it was dark. I lost my cigarette lighter or I would have started a fire."

Overnight in water that was likely snake-infested water, he continued to try to make his way out, hoping to come across a highway or home.

The sun rose and he continued, tired and hungry, until he heard a helicopter piloted by Brian Kent pass overhead. Dutton waved a handful of wild cane poles he had gathered until Kent and Capt. Todd Hutchens, the Bulloch County Sheriff's Office's chief investigator, spotted him standing in the water.

Soon afterward, Dutton was checked out by Bulloch County EMS, refused a trip to the hospital and asked to go home.

"He said he was hungry, tired and wet," Anderson said as he spoke to reporters at Lower Lotts Creek Church, where searchers and law enforcement gathered as a base for the search. "He probably had plenty of mosquito bites and was tired, said he wanted a shower."

More than 75 people, including law enforcement, firefighters, other emergency responders and local volunteers, helped look for Dutton.

Many deputies who were on duty Tuesday night returned Wednesday morning, off duty and voluntarily, many with personal ATVs and boats, ready to continue the search, said Bulloch County Chief Deputy Jared Akins, who also was involved in the search.

He commended the off-duty deputies for their dedication to helping find Dutton.

"He's very fortunate," Anderson said. "Bad things could have happened, as much water as he was in."

Creeks and other waterways are still swollen from recent heavy rains.

"We're always happy when it turns out like this," Anderson said.

Dutton's SUV remains submerged, and no one is quite sure its exact location. Dutton said it could not be seen from the surface.

He said he was determined he would escape the dangerous situation and never feared he would not survive.

"I was going to just walk out of there," he said. "If the snakes had bitten me, I'd have bitten them back."

Sylvia Dutton, as well as other family members and friends, were ecstatic Wednesday morning after Dutton was found.

"I'm just glad they found him, and thank everybody who helped search," she said.

During the night, when the search had been postponed and no one knew where her husband was, her thoughts were "not real good thoughts," she said. "With him being disabled and on medications, and it was dark," she feared the worst.

Dutton, the owner of SD Properties, which includes See Pines and Seabrook apartment complexes, and who owned Haulin' Tail Motorsports before it closed, will celebrate his 44th wedding anniversary this month.

Holli Deal Bragg may be reached at (912) 489-9414.