| Updated: 12/14/2012 5:41 pm |
Published: 12/14/2012 9:59 am
|
A Pryor teen is recovering after being locked inside an old bank vault for hours.
It happened at the former Old First National Bank on Main which is now the Grand Lakes Mental Health Center.
The teen was not a patient, but rather a person with the cleaning crew.
Teresa Armantrout has worked at the Grand Valley Abstract Company for nearly 22 years. It sits right across the street from the Grand Lakes Mental Health Center where the teen got locked in the vault on Thursday evening. Teresa’s company also uses an old bank vault to store valuable documents in, but when she heard the news about what happened, she began to have a flashback.
"We have another one around there, and I was in it one time when the door was closed and I'm claustrophobic so I panicked,” says Armantrout.
Thankfully, it was just another co-worker playing a joke on her.
"I just can't imagine how that girl felt,” she says.
Around 7 Thursday evening, a cleaning crew was inside the building when they heard some commotion inside the vault. That’s when they realized a teenage girl was trapped inside. She had gone in to get some cleaning supplies where they were being stored and the handle broke.
"I think they tried to address the situation through the doorway and that wasn't working at all so they went through the left of the door and cut a 14 by 20 hole for this young lady to crawl out,” says Prior Fire Department Chief, Tim Thompson.
For this very reason, Teresa says her company will be much more careful and cautious with their vault. Once the teenager was pulled out of the vault, paramedics had to give her a breathing treatment because she was having a hard time getting air.
