Neighbours’ complaints free pensioner trapped in bathroom for 20 days


An elderly woman trapped in her bathroom due to a jammed lock spent 20 days imprisoned there before she was able to alert neighbours – who thought she was a DIY pest.

The Parisian, who was 69 and shut in a room with no window or means of communicating with the outside world, tapped on pipes in hopes of being rescued. Her plan worked eventually, but residents in her building had taken her attempts to alert them as a noise nuisance. The BBC has the story:

Paris woman trapped for 20 days in bathroom

[…]

[Her neighbours] thought the noise was DIY work and started a petition to have it stopped. But a few people realised they had not seen the pensioner recently and called the authorities, who sent in a rescue crew.

Firefighters broke into her second-floor flat in Epinay-sous-Senart and reportedly found her lying on the ground in the bathroom, in a “very weakened” state.

The woman, who has not been named, had survived on warm tap water for almost three weeks. She is now recovering in hospital. Read the full story here…