Woman Spends 2.5 Days Stuck in a Stairwell

A woman who had been arrested in Missouri was subsequently released from the St. Louis Justice Center—but she didn't get out for two more days. The Post-Dispatch explains the unnamed woman had been told to ride the elevator to the first floor, turn right, and exit the building. Instead, she apparently rode it to the fifth floor at 8:17 a.m. on June 5 and then opened a fire exit door. It locked behind her, leaving her no way to get out of the jail: All floor-entry doors, as well as the ground-floor-exit door, were locked. Worse still, the fire exit door's alarm had been disabled because of maintenance in the building, so no one knew she was in there.

She made noise as she moved between the floors. Staff tried to locate the source of the noise but couldn't, and they never checked the fire stairs. It wasn't until someone saw her looking through the window of a door that she was found—at 6:32pm on June 7. She refused medical attention, saying she just wanted to go home. St. Louis Corrections Commissioner Dale Glass says procedures have been updated: People will now have an escort as they leave the public side of the jail. (An Olympic contender got trapped twice while in Sochi.)