Man Visiting Jail Gets Trapped for 30 Hours

A man visiting his son in Chicago’s Cook County Jail ended up a prisoner himself—trapped alone in a maximum security visitor’s room for 30 hours, according to media reports. The man, who has not been identified in the press, was rescued when he broke a sprinkler head.

“We’re tremendously sorry for what this man went through,” Cara Smith, the jail’s executive director, told the Chicago Tribune.

The man, who set foot in the jail on Saturday afternoon for his weekly visit with son, was directed to an unfamiliar area and entered the wrong room, which was closed so contractors could add security cameras. When two steel doors closed behind him, he was trapped with little recourse. He banged on the steel doors, but he could not be heard on the other side.

“There’s about two feet of cement and two steel doors between him and the outside,” Smith told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Finally, the man broke off a sprinkler head to prompt a fire department response and attract the attention of jail officials. Firefighters rescued him around 1:30 a.m. on Monday, according to the local ABC affiliate.

The man, who has not been identified, left the jail in good spirits and appeared to forgive the error, jail officials told the Tribune. He was treated in a local hospital for injuries to his hand sustained as he broke the sprinkler.

“We’re been looking at how and why and what went wrong,’’ Smith told the Tribune. “Multiple things obviously failed including a contractor leaving a door open while they did work in our jail. It was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to this horrible incident.’’

[Chicago Tribune]