When Kelsey Ingersoll was told her 2-year-old son Ezra was "in" an arcade machine at a pizza joint in Alabama Monday night, the mom assumed the boy's sister was exaggerating.
But then, sure enough, she walked over and saw the little boy standing inside a claw machine staring at her.
"We thought it was maybe like a basketball, one of those basketball games. We didn’t think you could actually climb into a crane game. It was never a worry of ours,” Ingersoll of Fairhope, Alabama, told Fox 10.
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The panicked mom rushed to her husband, Adam, for help. Together, the pair desperately tried to free the tot.
“The door would only open inwards so it was pushing on him so we couldn’t get him out,” Ingersoll described the couple's several failed attempts.
Eventually, more spectators started joining the family's rescue efforts, including employees at Rotolo’s Pizzeria, where the incident occurred. After they were unable to find a key to the machine, the workers called local authorities for backup.
Fortunately, first responders were able to carefully take apart the machine and grab the boy within 20 minutes.
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“Once we got the top off, we looked at a couple of different things and decided the best way was to put one of our firefighters on the opposite side of the machine, in there where he could pick the boy up and lift him out to mom or dad,” Fairhope Fire Chief Chris Ellis told Fox 10.
Ingersoll later took to Facebook to assure friends and family who heard about the ordeal that Ezra was safe.
"Only my child. 🙄," she joked Monday night. "He is ok now and going to bed!!"
The mother of four said she was shocked Ezra was able to crawl inside without her seeing.
"I count them every few minutes just to make sure they are all there," Ingersoll told WKRG. "I'm overprotective in that sense so it's weird this even happened."
She admits her son is quite adventurous.
"I'm pretty sure the terrible two just began," she joked.
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