Florida boy gets trapped after crawling into vending machine

The Associated Press
February 8, 2018 at 4:11PM
Fire fighters work to free a boy who crawled inside a claw-style vending machine in Titusville, Fla.
Fire fighters work to free a boy who crawled inside a claw-style vending machine in Titusville, Fla. (Dennis McGrath/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — When a young Florida boy wanted a stuffed toy, he crawled inside a claw-style vending machine in the play area of a restaurant to fetch one. And, he got stuck inside the glass-encased structure.

Thankfully, off-duty firefighter Jeremy House was also having dinner at the Beef O'Brady's restaurant in Titusville, on Florida's Atlantic coast. He yelled for someone to call 911 and his colleagues from a nearby fire station joined him in rescuing the boy named Mason.

"He went in, but obviously he couldn't come back out the same way," Battalion Chief Gregory Sutton told The Associated Press.

Mason sat atop the stuffed toys while firefighters took just 5 minutes to get him out.

Sutton says the boy was embarrassed, but wasn't in distress. And the machine sustained minimal damage.

about the writer

about the writer

More from Minnesota Star Tribune

See More
card image
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ASSOCIATED PRESS/The Minnesota Star Tribune

The "winners" have all been Turkeys, no matter the honor's name.

In this photo taken Monday, March 6, 2017, in San Francisco, released confidential files by The University of California of a sexual misconduct case, like this one against UC Santa Cruz Latin Studies professor Hector Perla is shown. Perla was accused of raping a student during a wine-tasting outing in June 2015. Some of the files are so heavily redacted that on many pages no words are visible. Perla is one of 113 UC employees found to have violated the system's sexual misconduct policies in rece