Missing Florida mom rescued after being trapped in shipping container for 3 days
The sound of banging coming from a locked shipping container led Florida police to a missing woman who purportedly had been trapped inside the steel box for three days.
Marlene Lopez, 52, appeared disoriented and unable to explain what happened to her when she emerged from a red metal container used to store lawnmowers in Cocoa around noon on Thursday.
“I was in one place and found in another,” a disheveled Lopez, clad in a leather biker jacket and tights, mumbled while walking to an ambulance to be taken to a hospital for a checkup, according to Fox 35.
The owner of the shipping container told News 6 he found a lighter and pipe inside after Lopez was rescued.
Lopez was reported missing on Wednesday after a coworker called the police to raise concerns about her well-being because she had failed to pick up her son — but the woman had not been seen since Monday, the Cocoa Police Department said in a Facebook post.
While detectives were interviewing Lopez’s family members and checking locations she was known to visit, they learned that she had been found.
“She had been banging on the door of the shipping container when someone heard her and unlocked the door,” cops said.
Lopez was uninjured but was hospitalized for an evaluation and possible dehydration.
Tyler Sonneberg, a Cocoa businessman who owns the shipping container that housed Lopez for three days, said he first spotted the woman walking around the area on Monday night.
He said that he locked the container on Tuesday afternoon and did not hear any sounds coming from within the next day.
Sonneberg said he believes Lopez may have wandered inside the container and passed out.
“She’d been in there since Monday night — that’s what we believe,” Cocoa police spokesperson Yvonne Martinez told the outlet.
Police are still investigating how Lopez ended up inside the container, and so far no charges have been announced.
