TAMPA, Fla. (WSVN) —It was a scary start to Halloween when parents discovered their toddler was trapped inside a Tesla.
Around 7:30a.m., on Halloween in Tampa, Dakota Knox put her daughter, Salem, in her Tesla and shut the door.
“We came out just like any other morning,” said Knox.
But when her husband went to get into the driver’s seat he was shocked to find that the door would not open.
“He’s like the door won’t open. The door won’t open. I don’t understand. I’m trying the app and the handle won’t work.”
All the doors to the vehicle were suddenly locked.
And Salem, in her green Tinkerbell costume for Halloween was strapped in her car seat crying inside.
“So I was terrified. My child was screaming. She was terrified,” said Knox.
Knox said the manual key wouldn’t open the vehicle and restarting the tesla app didn’t do anything.
And despite the vehicle itself being fully charged, none of the doors would open.
“We don’t really know what’s going on. This is strange. This has never happened before,” said Knox.
Turns out it was the vehicle’s 12-volt battery that was the problem.
This battery powers things like the vehicle’s door locks.
“So from there, we’re trying to jump it. And it still wasn’t doing anything. It wouldn’t open any of the doors,” said Knox.
Knox said tesla staff told her they couldn’t send someone out to help until the afternoon.
So she was relieved when Tampa police showed up.
“They were so calm, and they’re watching YouTube videos. We’re all trying to Google stuff,” she said.
They figured out a way to manually open the doors of Knox’s Tesla Model 3.
“And reach it all the way to the front seat. And thankfully, the police officers were able to actually get in and hooked open the door. We all cheered,” Knox said.
Knox didn’t get a notification about her battery needing to be replaced until five hours after it died.
She wants other parents to be aware and for Tesla to take a closer look.
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