Author’s Son Lay on Mountain for 5 Days Without Food, Drink

In so much pain from a 25-foot fall that he could only roll sideways, the son of author Dominick Dunne lay on a mountainside for five days, unable to eat or drink.

Finally, after gulping drops of an afternoon rain, Alex Dunne forced himself to walk to survive, his family said. He emerged from the mountain forest Thursday, nearly a week after he disappeared.

“We just hugged him,” his father said. “We are thrilled that he’s alive. I had sort of given up hope that he had survived.”

It was well after nightfall by the time Alex Dunne finished the 4 1/2-hour trek down a rugged mountain path to the car he left at the trail head early last Saturday on what was to have been a one-day hike.

There he found his older brother, actor-filmmaker Griffin Dunne, and the rescuers who had been searching for him since Monday in heavily wooded Madera Canyon in the Coronado National Forest, about 50 miles south of Tucson.

Dunne, 38, was taken to a Tucson hospital for X-rays and was expected to be released today, hospital spokeswoman Susan Flynn said Friday. He did not break any bones, but his back hurt and he had cuts and scrapes, the hospital said.

The San Francisco teacher had last been seen a week ago at the Nogales home of his mother, Ellen Griffin Dunne. He apparently drove off in her station wagon early last Saturday morning but left no word as to his destination.

He had a backpack with a blanket, clothes, books and an empty water jug that he planned to fill with spring water, said Nogales Police Lt. John Kissinger.

On the trail, Dunne twisted his ankle and fell 25 feet, hurting his back. “All he could do was roll from side to side,” his mother said. “He hadn’t eaten in five days.”

Dominick, Griffin and Alex Dunne plan to spend the next couple of days together. The elder Dunne said he then plans to return to covering the O.J. Simpson trial for Vanity Fair magazine and Griffin Dunne will go back to New York to work on a movie, “Party of Four.”

The disappearance brought back memories of an earlier family tragedy. The author’s daughter, Dominique Dunne, was slain by a former boyfriend in Los Angeles in 1982 shortly after completing her first movie role in “Poltergeist.”