Firefighters spent three hours rescuing a two-year-old boy after he got jammed in his family’s new washing machine.
Toddler Tao Peng was being cared for by his grandmother but climbed into the device and became stuck when she wasn’t looking.
Grandmother Qing Yuan Ku, 52, said: “I only turned my back for a minute to cook something and he was gone. He had put a bag of snacks inside the machine, climbed up on a stool and locked himself inside.”
Firefighters had to be called to the family home in the city of Nanjing in eastern China’s Jiangsu province.
A spokesman added: “The boy broke the locking mechanism of the machine when he clambered into it, making it impossible to release the door. Consequently we had to spend three hours dismantling the machine to get him out. He was shocked and upset but otherwise unharmed.”
His grandmother was obviously relieved but she was less than happy about the state of the washing machine: “The main thing of course is that he is all right. His parents were at work which is why I was around cooking and looking after him. I spent years saving up for that machine and the firemen weren’t able to put it back together.”