Woman Trapped in Locked Bathroom Forced to Break Out Shawshank-Style
Karen Perrin has labeled herself a modern-day Andy Dufresne after she successfully broke out of a locked office bathroom.
It was around 10 o'clock on a Friday night, and Perrin was working late making travel arrangements for her boss.
Little did she know, her night was about to get a lot longer. And smellier.
"I wrapped things up at my desk, packed my work bag, went to the ladies room for a quick trip there before departing," Perrin told Fox News.
Washing her hands after doing her business, Perrin went to leave the restroom only to find herself locked in. "I thought, ‘Ah! This cannot be,'" she told ABC News. "It sounds crazy, but I went back into the stall and then washed my hands again hoping to change something."
With her cellphone on her desk, Perrin, who suffers from claustrophobia, had no way to signal her distress to the outside world.
She tried sticking paper towels under the door in the hopes that someone was monitoring the office's security cameras and would come and rescue her. But no one did.
She tried kicking the door, breaking off the door handle, dismantling the lock, but none of that worked.
After six hours, with her wits on the verge of ending, Perrin made a last ditch effort to escape through an escape hatch in the ceiling.
That too was a bust, but Perrin did manage to obtain a three-foot-long rod and a new plan. "I thought about Shawshank Redemption," she said.
Using the rod and the broken door handle, Perrin spent the next two hours bashing through layers of dry wall, until she made a hole big enough to put her arm through.
All that was left then was to stick out her hand and open the door.
"I came undone," she told ABC. "I was crying. I felt like I was escaping a bad dream, like when you have a nightmare and you wake up and your heart is pounding and you realize, ‘Oh, I was just dreaming. Did that just happen. Am I OK?'"
Perrin, who is married to former Redskins Running Back Lonnie Perrin, immediately called up her concerned husband to inform him of her whereabouts.
Perrin said she'll be taking the next few days off.
