An adventurous two-year-old became trapped inside a claw machine at a Missouri recreation center and appeared unfazed, playing with a ball as rescuers worked to free him.
Margaret King was at the Soccer Dome in Webster Grove on Feb. 7 watching her older son play when she briefly took her eyes off her toddler, Cooper, who had been fiddling with the controls of a claw machine, First Alert 4 reported.
“I literally glanced over there. He was pretending to play with the claw machine,” King told the outlet. “I looked away for maybe 15 seconds.”
In that brief moment, King said she heard a scream and turned around to find Cooper inside the arcade crane game.
As adults rushed over, the two-year-old appeared completely unfazed, his mother said.
“If anyone knew my son, Cooper, they would totally understand that he would do something like this,” King said.
“You know he’s laughing, throwing balls everywhere. We were like Cooper, try and go back down, and he was like shaking his head.”
Once she realized Cooper was safe but couldn’t guide him out, King said she had no choice but to call 911.
First responders arrived within minutes, but Cooper remained inside until a vending company worker arrived with a key.
The toddler spent nearly 20 minutes inside the machine as onlookers snapped photos and recorded videos that have since gone viral on social media.
A widely shared clip shows Cooper smiling and playing with stuffed animals while first responders searched for a way to free him.
“I didn’t think it was going to go this big,” the tot’s mother said.
Since the video went viral, King said some people online questioned why she didn’t simply use the claw mechanism to scoop Cooper out.
“I was going to comment back that I didn’t have enough change since he used it all,” she quipped.
“In today’s world, everyone needs someone funny on their TV and what’s not funny about a 2-year-old playing in a claw machine?”
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