Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Mom locked in wardrobe for seven hours by toddler

When Karen Kilgour decided to spend a day at home tidying the house and playing with her infant son, she got a lot more than she bargained for.
Mrs. Kilgour, from Mt Eden in Auckland, New Zealand, had to be rescued after spending seven hours trapped inside a tiny wardrobe after her 14-month-old son Harry shut the door on her.
“I’m slowly starting to see the funny side,” Mrs. Kilgour told The Times, after recalling her household ordeal.
The 32-year-old antiques dealer was tidying up the clothes in her son’s bedroom wardrobe at 9.30am on Friday morning when the toddler, playing on the bedroom floor next to her, decided to play a game of hide and seek.
“I could see him at the door and he was closing it ever so slightly, but it was just like a game,” she said. “But the next thing I know he pushed the door to and I suddenly I thought: ‘Oh my god, I’m locked in here by myself’.”
The wardrobe was about 16in (40cm) deep and unfortunately for Mrs. Kilgour, unlike the others in the newly built home, it did not have a magnetic lock.
Mrs. Kilgour spent about three hours trying to open the door. First she tried to bang it open with her hip. Then she pulled a shelf off the wall and tried to wedge it in the door crevice, and even tried to pull bits of metal off an ironing board in the wardrobe to break the door frame – to no avail.
Screaming for the neighbors did not help either as every time Mrs. Kilgour screamed, her son became distressed and began crying too.
At one point she put her fingers under the door and called out for Harry, who came over and played with them. But he grew bored and crawled out of the bedroom.
“I could hear him bashing and screaming and crashing and crying all over the house,” Mrs. Kilgour said.
“For a few hours he wasn’t in the room and I was very worried about what he was doing, I was very concerned for him because he’s only 14 months old. He can’t walk but he’s definitely into climbing. I was just thankful the back door was closed so he couldn’t go out into the garden.”
Eventually Harry came back into the room, and as Mrs. Kilgour began to sing to him, he eventually fell asleep on the bedroom floor. “It was only then that I was finally able to totally relax,” she said.
At about 4.30pm – seven hours after she became locked in the wardrobe – Mrs. Kilgour’s husband Jason came home from work and let her out. She was lucky – Mr. Kilgour was supposed to have been out until midnight but had come home between work functions because of heavy traffic.
Mrs. Kilgour was unharmed apart from being dehydrated and hungry. And Harry seemed to have survived his day at home by helping himself to food left over from breakfast, and playing with his favorite toys.
As for the wardrobe door, the family is planning to get builder back to put a handle on it.
“Harry is actually quite scared of the wardrobe now; he bursts into tears every time we go near it,” Mrs. Kilgour said.
“It will be a funny story for his 21st, but I’m just happy he was ok.”
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'Cavemen' inherit billions

Two penniless brothers who are so poor they live in a cave could be set to inherit a share of a £4 billion fortune.
Zslot and Geza Peladi live in the cave outside Budapest, Hungary, and sell scrap they find on the street for pennies.
Now they and a sister who lives in America are said to be on the verge of inheriting their grandmother's massive fortune after a life of poverty.
They learned of their good fortune after homelessness charity workers in Hungary were contacted by lawyers handling the estate of the brothers' maternal grandmother who died recently in Baden-Wurttenberg, Germany.
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American Airlines redefines the term "Wide Body"

Obese air passenger in economy seat has picture taken
An image of an obese passenger squeezed into an economy airline seat has reopened a debate about how airlines deal with growing numbers of oversized passengers.
The picture, posted on an aviation blog, was reportedly taken by a flight attendant to illustrate to airline managers the difficulty of dealing with passengers who cannot fit into seats.
It is unclear if the man was aware his picture was being taken or whether the flight, on US carrier American Airlines, took off with the passenger spilling out of his seat.
Airlines already offer extended seatbelts to larger passengers to comply with safety rules but a number of carriers now insist obese customers buy an extra seat.
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30 Secrets Your Waiter Will Never Tell You

Prime minister loses job after forgetting absence note

The Prime Minister of the tiny Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been left red-faced and out of a job, after he lost his seat in parliament thanks to a simple paperwork error - he didn't hand in a note explaining his absences.
Prime Minister Edward Natapei fell foul of a rule that members of parliament in Vanuatu will forfeit their seat if they miss three consecutive sittings of parliament without notifying the speaker of the reason for their absence.
All he needed to do while away on official business was hand in a signed note explaining why he wasn't there. But, in a mistake that one analyst called 'flabbergasting', the Prime Minister's office somehow overlooked this rule - with the result that Natapei has now lost his seat, plunging Vanuatu into a political crisis.
Natapei's cabinet hurriedly convened emergency talks, while Natapei himself was reported to be rushing back to Vanuatu from a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago.
Vanuatu will now have a caretaker government until the parliament elects a new prime minister next week.
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