A three-year-old boy in Queensland, Australia had to be rescued from a Hello Kitty claw machine after he climbed inside to retrieve a toy he wanted.
As shared by Queensland Police on X, formerly Twitter, the three-year-old Ethan was seen calmly sitting inside the claw machine as they arrived at the scene. "Ethan and the Police: 1 Claw Machine: 0,” the police's tweet about the video reads. "Police were called in to rescue the adventurous Ethan, who had crawled up into a toy machine at a Capalaba shopping centre on Saturday."
In the clip, seen below, authorities are seen communicating with Ethan's parents as they try to figure out the best course of action to get him out of the machine. Funnily enough, he appears unfazed by the situation and actually flashes onlookers a smile through the whole ideal. "Are you able to get him into that back corner?” one of the responding officers asks his father, Timothy Hopper.
Police were eventually able to move Ethan over to the other side of the machine as his parents stood by. He was instructed to cover his eyes as one of the officers broke through the glass on the machine. Ethan was then able to safely climb through broken glass, at which point he was picked up by his dad. "You won a prize, which one do you want?" he joked to his son.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ethan's father said it was "unbelievable" how quickly his son was able to get inside of the claw machine because he turned away for just a "split second."
“He loves claw machines … As he always does, he opened up the flap to be an opportunist. Then, within a split second, he crawled into the machine, the door closed behind him. He stood up and realised what happened and he was king of the mountain," Ethan's father shared. "I messaged my old man and he asked me how many two-dollar coins do we have. It was quite funny. I’ve got a bit of negative feedback over social media [but] kids are going to be kids, they can move in the blink of an eye."
One of his first responses was to call the number on the claw machine, which got him in contact with someone at the company behind it. "They were asking me, ‘How much money have I put in the machine? Is the money stuck in the machine?’ My response was, ‘The only thing stuck in the machine is my child, I would love to have him back,'" he added.
