A Nebraska toddler who went missing from his home was discovered to have climbed into a claw crane machine in a Nebraska bowling alley on Monday, UK MailOnline reported.
The three-year-old boy got stuck inside the toy machine after he escaped through the front door of his home and walked into a nearby amusement arcade.
According to ABC News, a frantic search was initiated by the police after receiving a call from the boy's mother, Ashley Ireland. Upon not finding Kael around the apartment on Monday afternoon, she contacted the Lincoln police.
When a group of customers noticed Kael's movements in Madsen's Bowling and Billiards in Lincoln, they quickly alerted the staff to the stowaway inside the machine, according to UK MailOnline.
Kael was found playing with stuffed toys inside one of the machines.
Rachell Hildreth, the bartender, was informed about the situation of a trapped toddler inside the machine by a group of friends who had been bowling nearby.
As it was being analyzed how Kael could have made his way inside the machine, the toddler had a group of about 25 spectators watching him through the glass.
"How did he get in there? That's pretty much what everyone was saying," she told WOWT.
The toddler must have crawled through the chute that the metal claw drops toys into, Hildreth said.
"He was just having a heyday," Hildreth told the Lincoln Journal Star. "He didn't notice anyone around him."
While Kael did not panic during the whole incident, his 24-year-old mother was desperate with worry.
"It was the most scared I've ever been," Ireland said.
However after tracking the toddler down, the next obstacle was to figure out how to get him out of the machine.
"Staff at the bowling center had to call the vending machine's operators, who were able to direct them on how to open it," UK MailOnline reported. "After being reunited with his mother, Kael was then allowed to keep a teddy bear from inside the machine as a memento of his adventure."
