A Moncton man says his wife and four-year-old child were trapped in the mail room of a UPS store for three hours on Monday night, due to an apparent malfunction with the door mechanism.
Jason Steeves says his wife and son used their after-hours key to enter the UPS mail room at 8:30 p.m. on Monday, and that the door “sealed” behind them. Steeves and his other son, 14, were outside waiting for the others when they discovered the problem.
“I probably wanted to break the window right away,” Steeves told CTVNews.ca by phone on Tuesday. “It was concerning.”
Steeves says he tried to force the door, but when that didn’t work he called police and reached out to UPS on Facebook.
Steeves says UPS head office in the U.S. called him and tried to identify the store owner, but were unable to do so.
Police arrived at the scene at approximately 10 p.m.
Steeves says police called in a store manager, but the manager didn’t have a key. Instead, a locksmith was brought in, and it was soon determined that the lock had been broken and could not be opened.
The manager helped police identify the store owner, and officers went to his home to wake him. Steeves says the owner arrived at the store at approximately 11:30 p.m., and let his wife and son out through a secondary, alarm-enabled entrance.
Steeves says it was a concerning ordeal for the family, especially since it was difficult for him to hear his wife and son through the thick glass.
He says he helped the boy pass the time by making faces at him through the glass. “I was trying to entertain him,” Steeves said.
An employee at the UPS store could not confirm the state of the door when reached by phone on Tuesday.
