Woman returning home on Friday

Thursday, February 3rd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Medical personnel from the town of Grove are helping a woman who was known as Jane Doe for more than two years return to North Carolina. Mary Joyce Howard was run over and left for dead while walking along Interstate 40 near the Texas border in February 1998. She spent most of two years in a vegetative state in an Oklahoma City nursing home, and her identity wasn't known because she had no identification.

Howard began talking in July, although she was difficult to understand. Authorities discovered her identity last month after she recited her Social Security number to a nurse technician at Presbyterian Hospital. Family members then were located in North Carolina. The emergency medical services agency in Grove has volunteered to drive the woman to High Point, N.C., free of charge. To care for her during the trip, a Grove doctor and two EMS paramedics will make the trip in the ambulance. The trip will begin Friday.