Girl, 5, Gets Trapped Inside Running Washing Machine

A 5-year-old girl in Texas is expected to survive despite a freak accident that left her trapped inside a running washing machine for several minutes, reports KHOU-TV in Houston. The incident took place at a laundromat. Police say a woman put coins into a machine but asked for a refund when it wouldn't start and moved on to a different one, reports Click2Houston. At some point, the girl apparently climbed into the first machine, and it began running on high speed.

"She was tumbling pretty fast in there," says a police spokesperson in Pasadena. "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." Someone finally realized what has happening, and an employee shut off power to the machine to stop it. The girl was airlifted to a Houston hospital with unspecified injuries, but paramedics thought she would survive. It's not clear who was supervising the girl in the laundromat, and police are investigating. (More washing machine stories.)