St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. PETERS, Mo. — Twenty-six high school soccer players and two adults who crammed into a glass elevator at the Mid Rivers Mall were trapped for a half-hour Saturday.
Firefighters who happened to be at the mall for a career day got them out through a hatch in the elevator’s ceiling about 3:30 p.m.
The people, from Cape Girardeau, Mo., were shaken but uninjured, said Steve Brown, assistant fire chief of the Central County Fire and Rescue of St. Peters. They climbed through the hatch, up a ladder and onto the second floor.
The elevator stalled because its weight limit was exceeded.
Brown said it was nice timing that an engine company of one captain and two firefighters were at the mall for the career day. One of the firefighters climbed into a pit to turn off power to the elevator. Another climbed down the shaft, lowered himself to the elevator’s hatch and opened the hatch door.
“A blast of heat came out because of all the people were packed in there like sardines,” Brown said. “The perspiration was actually running down the glass.”
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