Woman accidentally locked self in bathroom for three weeks

Epinay-sous-Senart, Paris: A French woman spent two weeks trapped in her own bathroom after a door lock broke and her cries for help fell on deaf ears.

Rescue workers who broke into her home found her in what was described as a “very weakened” state. She had survived on drinking warm tap water – at night she banged on pipes in the hope of alerting her neighbors to her terrible predicament, it turns out they thought that it was just someone doing repair work in the house. They even launched a petition to find out who was behind all the commotion so that they could have it stopped.

In the end, it was her absence, rather than her nocturnal cries for help that got people worried. She is currently recuperating in hospital.

Now, I don’t want to go and cast dispersions on her survival instincts or anything, but I am a little surprised that she couldn’t find her way out of her own bathroom. Granted, the lock was broken, but interior doors (bathroom doors included) are generally pretty flimsily constructed – and the locks are only designed to withstand accidental intrusion… three weeks without food puts a person on the verge of death, you’d think that she would have tried to batter her way out with the toilet cistern cover, or jimmied the lock with an empty tube of toothpaste… or flooded the apartment if she was not physically capable of getting out via brute force. [News.com.au]