A 38-year old mom in Arkansas went to court on a Thursday to plead innocent on charges of selling pirated music CDs at a local flea market. But the bailiff locked her up in solitary, then forgot about her and went home for the weekend.

[For] four full days, Adriana Torres-Flores was locked away and forgotten in 8 1/2-by-9 1/2-foot cell in the Washington County Courthouse, with only a metal table, two benches and a light bulb that never went out. She had nothing to eat or drink. There was no toilet. Thursday passed. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday – although Torres-Flores had no watch to tell the time. She slept on the floor with her head on a shoe. She drank her own urine, she said.

Panicked and afraid she would die, Torres-Flores pounded on the steel door with her hands and feet, and yelled. No one heard her. The threat of snow had thinned the courthouse staff Friday.

The building was closed all weekend.

It was Monday morning before the bailiff who had put her in the holding cell, intending to have her taken to jail, opened the door and realized his mistake.