Woman climbs into a tiny donation box, needs firefighters to pry her out

Jim McFarland, the director of communications at the Catholic volunteer organization St. Vincent de Paul in Seattle, told me that outside donation boxes bring more trouble than they’re worth.

“We’ve looked at them, but they’re just trouble,” McFarland said. “You see nothing but garbage.”

When firefighters went to the scene of a charity donation box after receiving a 911 call at 4:34 a.m. this morning, however, they didn’t find garbage, but a 26-year-old human being lodged “halfway inside” the box, Seattle Fire department PIO Kevin Moore told Fusion.

From the Seattle Times:

A 26-year-old woman had crawled inside the 4-foot by 6-foot clothing-donation box at the corner of Fourth Avenue South and South Mead Street to take clothes, according to statement from the Seattle Fire Department. When she was crawling out, her leg became stuck in the anti-theft mechanism.

Moore said that the firefighters needed to use “spreaders and cribbers” to pry the woman out. The spreaders pried the box open and the cribbers are wooden blocks that keep the hole open for the woman to climb out.

Many questions remained unanswered—how did the woman crawl inside in the first place? Who made the original 911 call? How does the anti-lock mechanism work? Was she just attempting to donate herself?