Child Crawls Inside 'Claw' Vending MachineBoy Wanted Toy From Store
POSTED: 2:53 pm EDT May 20, 2005
UPDATED: 4:11 pm EDT May 20, 2005
An Indiana toddler had an early morning trip to Wal-Mart that he'll never forget.
He had so much fun in fact, firefighters had to be called to rescue the stuck three-year-old from a store vending machine.
With his sleep schedule thrown off by cold medicine, three-year-old James was awake at 3:30 a.m. Thursday, so he and his mother went to the Elkhart, Ind., Wal-Mart.
On their way out, James wanted a toy from what most of us know as the claw machine.
James' mother tried to get a toy out of the machine. But when the toy didn't come out, James apparently decided to go in."
"He had climbed up the chute and into the bin and was playing with all these toys, hanging by the bar like a monkey," said Danielle Manges, his mother.
At first his mom laughed, but when Wal-Mart couldn't find a key, she called the fire department.
"I expected his hand to be caught in the machine," said Anthony Coleman of the Elkhart Fire Department.
"His entire body was in the Machine. It was a toy machine and he was actually in there and he was enjoying himself," Coleman said.
Danielle bought a camera and took pictures of James and his rescuers who used some tools and in 10 minutes pulled James free from the vending machine.
"You just open the back up and actually he came right to me and I picked him up and handed him to mom and checked him out and he was fine and off they went," said Jeff Herman of the Elkhart Fire Department.
"He's doing all right. He was in a little bit of trouble afterward. He definitely didn't get a toy after that," said his mother.
"That's the next great Houdini, I guess," she added.
Wal-Mart declined to comment on the incident.
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