He only went outside because Arsenal were losing, and that is how Sallie was found

Arsenal were losing three-nil to Brighton, so Alastair Cass walked out of his house in Devon. From outside he heard a noise across the valley. A woman had been stuck in mud up to her chest for four hours and could not move.

5 October 2026

Crews working in a muddy wooded gully in Devon: an ambulance operational commander in a hi-vis jacket watching from higher ground while two rescuers kneel on boards laid across the mud beside the woman, whose face is obscured — The crews reaching her, on boards laid across the mud. Faces have been obscured.
Photo: Alastair Cass / SWNS

Alastair Cass is forty, runs a vintage restoration business and lives on a hundred and fifty acres outside Chulmleigh, in Devon. On the day in question Arsenal were being beaten three-nil by Brighton, and he had had enough of watching it, so he got up and went outside.

Just due to the game and how it went was the only reason why I stepped out the house, as I’d had enough. If it went differently I would have stayed and watched the post-match interviews and so on.Alastair Cass, to SWNS

The noise

He was walking over to one of his barns when he heard something from across the valley. He has lived there twenty-eight years and the place makes noises, so he carried on. Then he heard it again.

I was like, something’s up. I jumped on the quad bike and started to head down to the river, and then heard it again, and kept going down, and that was when I could finally hear the word ‘help’ clearly.Alastair Cass

He drove around the bottom of the valley stopping to ask her to call out again, and again, so he could work out where she was. She was not on his land at all but on a neighbouring property, down a ditch.

Four hours

Her name is Sallie. She had gone in at about one in the afternoon and he reached her at five. She was stuck in the mud up to her chest line and she was shivering.

It’s such an unkempt and dangerous area to go in. But I eventually came across her, down a ditch, stuck in mud up to her chest line. I swore when I saw her, because I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing after living here for twenty-eight years.Alastair Cass

He went back for ladders and rope and got her secured so that she could not sink any further, and stayed with her until the emergency services arrived at Chulmleigh. It took several of them to get her out.

Alastair Cass, a man in his forties with a short beard, wearing a dark cap and a grey hooded top, sunglasses hanging at his collar, standing in a doorway — Alastair Cass. He had lived there twenty-eight years and had never heard anything like it.
Photo: Alastair Cass / SWNS

The card

It was a Saturday. Afterwards Sallie sent him a card, and it fills in what the news reports left out: that he had gone outside for a cigarette, and that once the emergency services arrived he spent the rest of it running the field for them.

A handwritten thank-you card on white paper, held in someone's hand, beginning Dear Ali and signed off with three kisses, the signature blurred out — The card she sent him. Her signature has been obscured.
Photo: Alastair Cass / SWNS

Dear Ali, what can I say?! Thanks for trusting your instinct when you heard me shouting on Saturday. Thanks for taking time to come and investigate. Thanks to Arsenal for being rubbish at football. Thanks for smoking but you can stop as of now!! Thanks for your efforts to pull me out of the mire. Thanks for the many many trips up and down the field helping the emergency services!! I have never been so happy to see another human being, as I was to see you that day!! Thanks for everything you did!!Sallie, in a card to Alastair Cass

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The quotations, the times and the four hours are from Alastair Cass’s account to the SWNS news agency, carried by the Good News Network on 3 October 2026, and from Sarah Hooper’s report for Metro on 1 October 2026. The wording of the card is transcribed from the card itself. The photographs are published by permission; faces and the signature were obscured before they reached us.