Michmutters

South Brunswick police have ruled out criminal activity Friday after a witness on Wednesday reported seeing a woman bleeding from the face and yelling for help in a tractor-trailer cab on Route 130.

The case “appears to be a total accident,” said Jim Ryan, the deputy chief of the South Brunswick Police Department.

Early reports from officials said the truck driver pulled the woman back into the tractor-trailer cab Wednesday afternoon. The driver then traveled on Route 130 South before exiting at Ridge Road, police said.

Police found the woman and the truck driver together late in the afternoon on Thursday, officials said. Both agreed to come to police headquarters. Ryan said police ruled out foul play after speaking with both the driver and the woman.

Ryan said the woman and man are a married couple in their 50s. The man, who was driving the truck, stopped short when a car merged in front of them, he said.

This caused the woman, who was standing in between the cab and the sleeper, to fall forward and hit her head on a cupholder. She began bleeding and calling for help, Ryan said.

He added that the husband pulled over to the shoulder of the road. When the husband saw her bleeding, he pulled her back into the truck and drove her to get her medical attention.

“He doesn’t even realize that the witness reports that it is even there,” Ryan said. “He was n’t even aware that anyone even saw the interaction between him and his wife of him.”

Police received tips from across the country after asking for help from the public through social media, officials said.

The woman received medical care and has a bandage on her head, Ryan said. “We’ve ruled out any criminal activity,” he added.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Camille Furst may be reached at [email protected]. Find her on Twitter @CamilleFurst.

The search for a woman who was allegedly seen bleeding from the face and yelling for help in a white tractor-trailer cab in New Jersey has been found safe after a 26-hour manhunt, police announced Thursday evening.

A search was launched Wednesday afternoon after a witness reported seeing the woman bleeding and the man driving the truck pull her back into the cab around 2 pm on Route 130, heading towards the Ridge Road exit, South Brunswick Township police said.

Authorities released footage of the incident, pleading for tips on locating the truck.

The woman and the man in the incident were tracked down at 5:10 pm Thursday, police announced, and said the case was not as sinister as it initially seemed.

The pair was identified as a married couple in their 50s, Deputy Chief Jim Ryan told NBC News.

It turned out the woman was bleeding after hitting her head in the vehicle and in a panic attempted to get out through the window, and her husband sped off in the truck to get help, Ryan said.

Authorities said they received tips from around the country but the break in the case came from Gabrielli Truck Sales, a truck dealership located on Route 130 near where the incident took place, police said.

The business recovered video that allowed detectives to identify the truck and the female inside.

Authorities searched in Middlesex and Union counties for the white truck and detectives observed a man matching the witness description and leaving the truck in question and approached him.

Detectives also found the woman in the video at the same location.

Both agreed to go to the police headquarters and speak with detectives.

That’s when police learned the husband “stopped short” in the vehicle and his wife “fell forward and hit her head,” Ryan said.

“He pulled to the shoulder of the road when he saw she hit her head. She saw blood coming and she immediately panicked because she thought it was very bad so she was yelling for help and wanted to put pressure on it. When he stopped the truck and looked over and saw the bleeding he realized he had to take off to get help,” Ryan said.

“He never saw the witness or realized there was anyone who had seen the encounter,” Ryan added.

He said the wife’s bleeding eventually stopped and the couple ended up going to a local Rite Aid to get a bandage for her.

Ryan said when detectives found the couple they could see visible injury on the woman and she had a bandage on the side of her head.

Ryan said they also recovered video from inside the truck to confirm the couple’s account. He called finding the couple like “finding a needle in a haystack.” Tip calls came in from Texas, California, and Washington and police received help from the FBI.

“So often our stories are sad and tragic, and this one has a positive outcome because so many people got involved quickly and we found the answers,” Ryan said.

Chief Raymond Hayducka praised finding the couple as a “great team effort, from the community providing tips to detectives tracking down leads.”

“It was an exhaustive 26 hours, but we were able to locate the woman and make sure she was safe,” Hayducka said.