GIRL’S ORDEAL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21190, 10 November 1938, Page 6

GIRL’S ORDEAL

LOCKED OUT ON BALCONY By Telegraph—Press Association AUCKLAND, November 9. To be locked for three hours on a narrow balcony seven storeys above the street was the experience of a girl clerk employed in the office of the Shell Oil Company, Ltd., in the T. and G. Insurance Company building in Wellesley Street West. The balcony, which is about three feet wide, opens off an empty room which Is sometimes used by the staffs employed in the building as a lunchroom. The girl had gone on to the balcony during the luncheon hour, and her absence was not noticed by her companions when the door, which cannot bt opened from the outside, closed oehind her. On discovering her plight she tried to attract attention by knocking. When no reply was forthcoming she wrote a message on a piece of concrete which was lying on the balcony and dropped it to the footpath. The note was not seen and a second, dropped a few minutes later, struck a motor-car and rebounded on to the roadway. It was not until about three hours later that the girl’s absence was noticed in the office and a search began for her. It was at first thought that she had fallen asleep in the lunch-room, and when this was entered the girl was heard knocking on the door leading to the balcony. She was little the worse for her unnerving experience when released.