Fire department frees young boy who crawled into a claw machine to get a toy
An off-duty fire fighter happened to be in the restaurant to assist at the time.
— -- Firefighters rescued a young Florida boy in a pinch after he became stuck trying to get a toy from inside a claw machine.
Titusville Fire and Emergency Services public information officer Greg Sutton told ABC News that Mason got himself trapped inside the Pinnacle claw machine at Beef 'O' Brady's restaurant Wednesday evening. Lt. Jeremy House of the department happened to be dining when the incident occurred.
"He told the mother to call 911 knowing our guys are so close by and that they could handle the situation," Sutton said of the Titusville Fire and Emergency Services station, which is less than a mile down the road from the restaurant. "Our units were dispatched at 5:33 yesterday evening and arrived at 5:36 p.m. and Mason was safely extracted from the machine at 5:41 p.m."
"Once we understood the mechanism and how it worked it was pretty easy to get those pins removed and the door open the rest of the way," he said.
The fire department shared images on Facebook of the boy trapped inside the machine.
"This evening little Mason was enjoying some food and decided he wanted a stuffed animal. He wanted it so bad, he climbed into the game to get that toy," officials wrote. "Thankfully he was never in any distress as one of our own [lieutenants] happen to be there off duty and assessed the situation."
The boy, his mother and friends went back to eating dinner and Sutton confirmed that in the end, Mason got a stuffed football.
"One thing is for sure: you can never say never when it comes to the crazy things kids can do and there's no such thing as a perfect parent," Sutton said.
He added, "This is an awfully weird circumstance and you wouldn't expect it to happen, but it did have a happy ending and we strive to keep things positive and see the bright side."
