Customer Freed After Accidentally Being Locked Inside N.Y.C. Jewelry Store Vault for 10 Hours

The 23-year-old had been a customer trying to access his safety deposit box

A customer was freed Wednesday morning after he was accidentally locked inside a jewelry store vault in New York City on Tuesday night for around ten hours.

According to ABC 7 New York, a 23-year-old man was stuck in a room in a Midtown building at 580 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Firefighters then worked overnight to rescue the man by entering the building at 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

Per Fox 5, The New York City Police Department said that the man had been a customer trying to access his safety deposit box. However, the door automatically locked after workers closed the door behind him due to it being on a timing mechanism for safety purposes. ABC News reports that the customer was trapped in a 20-by-40-foot space.

PEOPLE has contacted the NYPD, but they did not immediately respond for comment.

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According to Fox 5, it took the NYPD and the New York City Fire Department several hours to break through the vault’s 30-inch concrete walls by using special equipment, before the man was freed on Wednesday morning.

“The vault opened on its own, it’s on a timing mechanism and he just was released from the vault,” FDNY official John Sarrocco told the press per ABC 7 New York. “He’s fine, he’s being evaluated by the EMS (emergency medical service).”

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He then explained that at around 8:45 pm on Tuesday the fire department received a call that a person had been locked in a vault at DGA Security. “They are a vault company that has a safety deposit box that caters to the diamond Diamond District,” Sarrocco added.

“We got to the point where we got to the metal plating,” the official continued as he described how the department broke through the vault’s wall. “We determined that at that point after about ten hours that we would hold off and see if the doors would open automatically," for the customer's safety.

He then said that at around 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, the vault opened on its own.

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