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     Indiana Boy Gets Trapped Inside Vending Machine

     Updated: 05-20-2005 04:32:47 PM

                      P H O T O

                       Three-year-old James Manges II swings from a bar
inside a toy vending machine at a Wal-Mart store in Elkhart, Ind., Thursday,
May 19, 2005. Manges crawled into the machine and was unable to get out
until the fire department arrived and opened the machine from the back

     ELKHART, Ind. -- A 3-year-old boy upset that his mother wouldn't let
him use a crane vending machine to try to win a small stuffed animal took
matters in his own hands. He climbed up the chute to get the prize himself.

     Danielle Manges said she took her eyes off her son, James, for a
moment to pick up a juice bottle he threw. When she looked up, he was in
with the plush toys.

     ''I bent over to clean it and within two seconds he had climbed
through the hole, into the chute and pushed the door shut so we couldn't get
him out,'' she said. ''He climbed up in the toys and was in there for a good
hour.''

     Manges said James has been sick and sleeping odd hours so they went
shopping about 3 a.m. Thursday at a Wal-Mart in the city some 15 miles east
of South Bend. She let the boy play on some of the rides, but wouldn't give
him money for the vending machine.

     At first, Manges thought it was funny.

     ''He was playing with all the toys and hanging from the bar like a
monkey,'' she said.

     Manges said people leaving the store went back inside to buy
disposable cameras to take photos of her son. She bought one herself.

     She became upset, however, when Wal-Mart employees said they did not
have a key to let James out. So Manges called the fire department for help.

     ''I expected his hand to be caught in the machine but it was his
entire body in the machine,'' firefighter Anthony Coleman said. ''He was
swinging from a bar, jumping around. He was having a ball.''

     About 40 people watched as the firefighters removed the back of the
machine and freed him.

     James still came up empty handed.

     ''He definitely didn't get a toy after that,'' Manges said.