Woman Trapped in Her Own House

Yesterday - Sunday morning - Paco (senior) and I were sitting in front of his house chatting when we heard a woman's screams for help. Two houses down, which in this crowded neighborhood means less than 50 feet, I found the source through the iron bars of her security door. Practically every home in Mazatlan has one. I also saw that she was holding her small son and he was unconscious, hanging limply from her arms. It took a few seconds to understand her dilemma, and the reason for her panicked screams - she was trapped inside her own home. The door was securely padlocked and as unbelievable as it may seem the keys to the lock had been misplaced. She was screaming "los llaves... los llaves" The keys... the keys. She was running back and forth, pleading with someone inside to find the keys and pleading through the bars for help.

I was the first on the scene and the first to understand the problem, but neighbors were gathering and the word was spreading quickly. Still no one could find a way to help. I grabbed a steel bar from the open car of Alberto, a neighbor who had just been ready to drive away and left his door open. It was one of those security bars used to lock a steering wheel. My thought was to use it to pry apart the lock, which was easy to reach just inside the bars of the door, but it was too fat to fit.

A neighbor told her to pass the baby through the bars, but halfway through it was obvious his head was too large to fit through the narrow bars.

Paco suggested passing the baby over the roof to his back patio. I ran through the house, up the concrete steps to the roof of Paco's house and shinnied across a narrow ledge to the roof two doors down. There was no patio. The house extended fully to the back of the lot. The woman and her unconscious baby were trapped in a concrete box and precious time was being lost. CPR was not being administered.

I ran back to the front door just as Alberto, the neighbor who lives across the street arrived with a claw hammer and a short crowbar. I held the lock while he applied the bar to the body of the lock and began to pound with all his might. The lock was resisting and didn't seem to be affected, but there were no other solutions at hand and Alberto was not going to stop until something gave. After a hundred blows the lock gave up its hold and was quickly released, the woman and her child stuffed into the car I had taken the security bar from and the baby rushed to a nearby clinic.

Everyone returned to what they had been doing just minutes earlier but there was the look of concern on everyone's face as they discussed what might be wrong with the child.

Paco and I returned to our chairs under the shade of the small ficus tree in front of his house. We were discussing the incident and Paco was telling me how stupid he thought it was not to hang the key to the lock where they could be found. But he pointed out these were not the brightest neighbors in the barrio.

Soon he pointed to a gray haired man just exiting the house directly across from the one we'd broken into and said "Abuelito del niño" - meaning he was the grandfather of the baby. The old man mounted his bicycle and headed for the clinic just a few blocks away.

The grandfather returned some time later and everyone in front of his house seemed relieved but it was not until Alberto returned that we learned the baby was suffering from a very high fever and an infection in his throat. I'm not sure what caused his unconsciousness but Alberto said he was under a doctor's care and expected to make a full recovery.