There was yet more drama at Grimsby Magistrates' Court last week after five solicitors became trapped in an upstairs waiting room at the building. The incident, which forced a number of cases to be delayed as staff battled to free the unfortunate quintet, follows the recent interruption of a hearing at the same court by a loud fart from the public gallery...
According to The Grimsby Telegraph, Sarah Middleton, Jade Taylor, Gary Bulbeck, Rachael Hartshorne and Jonathan Longbottom endured an hour-long ordeal as court staff tried and failed to liberate them – before finally succeeding.
In the end, in order to reach the faulty locking mechanism which caused the problem, the frame of the waiting room door had to be removed.
Upon her release, freed solicitor Sarah Middleton told of how she had tried unsuccessfully to open the door from the inside. "We had to get security to help," she said.
Fellow captive Gary Bulbeck added: "Sarah went to unlock it but it wouldn’t open so we were stuck there for about half an hour or 45 minutes. The bolt had jammed shut. I had three cases in court four in custody and couldn’t come down and do them so the court slowed down."
Following January's disruptive breaking of wind episode, all the lights in Grimsby Magistrates' Court reportedly "went out for a few seconds before flickering back on again". But any suspicion of supernatural involvement in this latest incident was ruled out when another solicitor, Rebecca Perrin, admitted to "messing up" the lock when she entered the room.
Perrin said: "I was trying to get in at the point when the lock broke. I was mortified because my apple was in there and I couldn’t get it – but not as mortified as everyone who was inside."