A five-year-old girl in a Pasadena, Texas laundromat was airlifted by a medical team to Houston on Tuesday after she was found locked inside a washing machine that was operating on its spin cycle.

Houston’s KHOU Channel 11 reported that the incident took place around 6:15 p.m. at Le’s Washateria and that the girl was trapped in the machine for several minutes before anyone noticed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Vance Mitchell with Pasadena Police told Channel 11 that bystanders at first didn’t realize what they were seeing.

“Unfortunately, she spun around in the washing machine for several minutes and apparently it was on high speed. She was tumbling pretty fast in there,” Mitchell said. “One person walked by and said they saw something flopping around in there. They thought it was just a dress or something because it was moving pretty fast.”

It’s unclear how long, exactly, the girl was inside the machine or how she got in.

“You’ve got to watch your kids. That’s the bottom line. If that was my son or granddaughter, I’d be really upset that I let it happen,” Mitchell said.

Paramedics on the scene said that the girl is expected to recover.

ADVERTISEMENT

The mishap echoes an incident from November of 2011, when an infant girl in Okanogan, Washington was rescued from a locked washer by her mother, who used a wrench to break the machine’s front window. Sheriff’s deputies stated at the scene that it was unclear whether the girl had climbed into the washer or been locked in as punishment.

Watch video about this story, embedded below:

ADVERTISEMENT

[image of Pasadena, Texas Le’s Washateria via screencap.jpg]