Woman Trapped in Office Bathroom for Eight Hours Chiseled Her Way Out

Is this your worst nightmare? It's certainly one of ours. Picture it. You're working late at the office and nobody's there. Literally, the office is empty. You run to the restroom before you finally depart the building and bam! Just like that, the handle is not budging. That's just what happened to Karen Perrin last Friday night at around 10 p.m. in her Washington, D.C. office. Per ABC News, Perrin called her husband to inform him she was heading home and then she clocked another 10 to 15 minutes on the job and went to the bathroom. Well, after washing her hands, she soon realized the door was unable to open. She explained to ABC News, “I thought, ‘Ah! This cannot be.' It sounds crazy, but I went back into the stall and then washed my hands again hoping to change something.” Again, she tried opening the door and jiggled the handle but nada. She even kicked it with her boot and then realized the sinking feeling, "I'm locked in here." For eight hours without her mobile phone. Feeling hopeless and like she "was going to die in there because of the anxiety I was feeling," Perrin brainstormed. She took paper towels and put them under the door in an effort for security guards to see movement on surveillance footage. No dice, not even after she put out 200 towels. After that futile attempt, she climbed on a chair and reached a ceiling escape door. Although she wasn't able to hoist herself up to it, she did find a three foot-long rod. Perrin was able to use the rod to chisel through the wall in order to reach the hole and open the door. After two hours, she broke through the wall, dry wall and insulation included, thereby creating a hole that was big enough to fit her arm! After reaching through it and holding onto the handle on the other side, she was finally able to open the door. At long last! “I came undone,” she recalled. "I was crying. I felt like I was escaping a bad dream, like when you have a nightmare and you wake up and your heart is pounding and you realize, ‘Oh, I was just dreaming. Did that just happen. Am I OK?’” We can only imagine the relief her husband and daughter felt after she called them! Per ABC, at that point they were getting ready to search for her.

Fishbowl

Woman Trapped in Office Bathroom for Eight Hours Chiseled Her Way Out

Vicki Salemi

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Vicki Salemi