Woman trapped in bathroom for 8 hours puts hole in wall

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- A woman who spent eight hours locked in her Washington office bathroom said she thought about "The Shawshank Redemption" as she bored a hole in the wall.

Karen Perrin said she decided to take a bathroom break while preparing to leave her office around 10 p.m. Friday and she found the handle jammed when she attempted to leave the women's restroom, ABC News reported Wednesday.

"I thought, 'Ah! This cannot be,'" Perrin said. "It sounds crazy, but I went back into the stall and then washed my hands again hoping to change something."

However, the handle still would not budge, even when she kicked it with her boot.

"That's when it hit me," she said. "'I'm locked in here.'"

Perrin said she spent some time pushing "about 200" paper towels under the bathroom door in the hopes of drawing the attention of someone monitoring security cameras, and she attempted to climb on a chair to reach an escape door in the ceiling.

Perrin said she was unable to pull herself up to use the escape door, but she did discover a 3-foot rod she decided to use to bore a hole in the wall.

"I thought about 'Shawshank Redemption,'" said Perrin, referring to the 1994 movie where Tim Robbins tunnels out of his prison cell.

Perrin said it took her about two hours to bore a hole all the way through the wall to allow her to reach through and open the door from the outside.

"I came undone," she said. "I was crying. I felt like I was escaping a bad dream, like when you have a nightmare and you wake up and your heart is pounding and you realize, 'Oh, I was just dreaming. Did that just happen. Am I OK?'"

Bosses at the office said they do not know how the door became locked from the outside.