An Australian father claims that his three-year-old kid "was having the time of his life" when he became stuck in a claw machine at a shopping complex in southeast Queensland.
At a Capalaba retail complex on Saturday night, three-year-old Ethan got inside the machine through the prize dispenser, according to the police.
The toddler was peacefully climbing on the toys in the vision, and adults were encouraging him to come out.
Timothy Hopper, Ethan's father, claimed that his son was fiddling with the equipment before vanishing from view.
"I had zero chance to react to it, it was unbelievable how fast he climbed up there," Hopper said.
"I was watching him and then I was talking to my children. He always opens up the flap to be an opportunist, and then within a split second he crawled into the machine and the door closed behind him."
Hopper said his son regularly played with the machines and was quite amused when he was inside.
"He stood up and realised what had happened, he climbed over the perplex glass and was king of the mountain," he said.
"I couldn’t help but laugh thinking 'how has this happened?' because he wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t sad, so it was easy to have a laugh when he was having the time of his life."
"But then reality sunk in — how am I going to get him out," he added.
According to a spokesman for Capalaba Park Shopping Centre, the incident marked a first for Retail First, a business that runs 21 shopping centres in the southeast.
"We are in discussions with the claw machine vendor to review what measures can be put in place to avoid this happening again," a spokesperson said.
Three-year-old Ethan has promised his father that he won't be getting any more entrapments in the future. To commemorate the occasion, he was given his own toy koala dressed as a police officer.
"Don’t worry dad, I won't do it again," Ethan said.
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