Stuck on elevator, boy with autism couldn't call for help
On Aug. 19, Michelle Ben of Salisbury had every parent's nightmare come true — her child went missing.
Ben detailed her story at the Ocean City mayor and City Council meeting on Oct. 18, explaining how nobody knew her son was stuck in a hotel elevator, because he is nonverbal and couldn't call for help. She made a plea for video cameras in hotel elevators.
Ben and her twin sons, Adam and David, checked into a large hotel in North Ocean City around 7 p.m. David has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and is nonverbal.
Around 10:30 p.m., David went missing.
"Adam and I searched for about 30 minutes and could not find him anywhere," Ben said at the meeting. "(David) was barefoot so we did not think he would go very far. He cannot speak, he doesn't drive so he could not have gone very far. He just seemed to have vanished into thin air."
At that point, Ben said she and her son went to the front desk of the hotel to seek help. Another person joined their search party and, after about 30 minutes of searching, the police were called.
"For about 90 minutes, which is a long time when you have lost a child, the assistant manager, the hotel security guard, me and Adam and two boys were looking for David but he was nowhere," Ben said.
That's when Ben caught a break.
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"At about 1:30 in the morning, I overheard the front desk clerk tell the hotel security guard he thought David was in the elevator," she said.
Ben was amazed. At that point, Ben said the fire department was called.
"I picked up the phone and said 'David? David are you in the elevator?'" she said. "And I heard nothing. I kept saying 'David are you in there? This is mommy. Talk. Are you in the elevator?'"
Then Ben heard what she was hoping for — a voice at the end.
"I heard, it was very soft, say 'Stuck. Elevator stuck,'" Ben said. "It was like talking with somebody from a different dimension. I was so relieved to hear where he was because we had no idea. That's a long time to lose your child, especially one who doesn't talk. And he can't do anything for himself."
David had been stuck on an elevator that broke down between the second and third floors. Ben said the front desk clerk had been receiving a call from the broken-down elevator; however, since David is nonverbal, no noise was coming out of the other end so he assumed the phone was malfunctioning.
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Ben said around 2 a.m., the fire department arrived and succeeded in removing David from the elevator.
"They pulled David up out of the elevator and I grabbed him," she said. "I was so glad to finally get my hands back on my boy."
Ben said her son was extremely hot when he came out of the elevator. Ben feared that, if David had not been rescued, he could have died from heat exhaustion.
A day short of two months since the incident, Ben made a plea to the town of Ocean City.
"I ask this council to require cameras in the elevators at any hotel that has more than one elevator," she said. "Not everybody can see, not everybody can hear and not everybody can speak. If there had been cameras in the elevator ... that young man could have looked to see if there was actually anyone in the elevator instead of just guessing because he heard nothing when he tried to speak with a person in the elevator that does not speak and (David) could have been found in a reasonable amount of time."
rghughes@dmg.gannett.com
On Twitter @hughesg19