LEWISTON – A group of workers who heard yelling near St. Peter’s Cemetery on Friday discovered a woman who had fallen down an embankment to the Androscoggin River.

Rescuers descended to the riverbank where they used a basket to pull 42-year-old Lisa Bonang-St. Hilaire to safety.

She was taken to Central Maine Medical Center where she was treated for bumps and scrapes.

How Bonang-St.Hilaire got down to the edge of the river remained a mystery. Police believe she had crashed her car somewhere before parking it in the St. Peter’s lot and wandering to an embankment on the river.

At about 2 p.m., cemetery employee Kevin Burgess and others discovered the abandoned car while they roamed the cemetery grounds. Moments later, they heard a voice.

“We heard her yelling for help from over the embankment,” Burgess said.

He and others called for help and climbed over a guardrail and down the snowy embankment. Police said Bonang-St.Hilaire was not on the river but was right at the edge.

“I just tried to calm her down,” Burgess said. “She told me she had no broken bones or anything. She had a couple scratches; that was about it.”

Even so, paramedics from United Rescue hauled Bonang-St.Hilaire up the hill in a blanket and took her to the hospital. Police, meanwhile, were trying to determine where Bonang-St. Hilaire had crashed and what led her to the cemetery.

According to police Lt. Mark Cornelio, the car sustained about $1,800 worth of damage. Officers were sent to the area to investigate.

“They checked up and down Switzerland Road, but they didn’t find anything she might have hit,” Cornelio said.

He said it was clear that Bonang-St. Hilaire got out of her vehicle on her own before wandering across Switzerland Road and down to the river. The crash remained under investigation.