Grabbed by the News

A 73-year-old woman was trapped March 20 by a newspaper machine outside a Wal-Mart store in Geneseo, Ill., and the store’s employees left her there for about 20 minutes before dropping 50 cents in the box to set her free.

The employees were following company policy about not tampering with the newspaper boxes, a Wal-Mart spokesman in Bentonville told the Dispatch/Argus of Geneseo. It was a Dispatch/Argus machine that snared the unnamed woman.

The woman put 50 cents in the machine, opened the door and reached in to get a newspaper. The spring-loaded door slipped from under her elbow, which she was using to hold it open, and slammed shut, trapping the strings from the hood of her jacket in the machine, the Dispatch/Argus reported.

She was unable to remove her coat to free herself because of a past surgery on her shoulder, the report stated.

“The store woman poked her head out the door and said that she was calling someone from The Dispatch to come and let me out,” the woman told the newspaper. “I told her I just wanted someone to come and put some quarters in the thing and that’s when she told me that they weren’t responsible for making refunds for the machine.”

After standing there bent over for about 20 minutes, the Wal-Mart employee came outside, put two quarters in the machine and opened the door to free the elderly woman.

“It was just a freak accident,” Dispatch/Argus reporter Matt Gergeni told the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. “It wasn’t Wal-Mart’s fault she got trapped.”

Since the incident, Gergeni said, Wal-Mart has given the woman a $25 gift certificate and the Dispatch/Argus has given her a free month’s subscription to the newspaper.