A two-year-old took a wild, five-minute ride on an airport conveyor belt earlier this week, suffering a fractured arm before workers finally shut down the belt.
Lorenzo Vega jumped on the moving luggage belt at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Monday after his mother briefly set him down to print out a boarding pass at a Spirit Airlines kiosk.
The Spirit counter was not open at the time so no gate agents were there to intercept the boy. By the time his mother, Edith Vega, realized what was happening, the boy was off on the belt.
The belt was not moving when the boy first began to climb on, but it is pressure-activated and immediately started once his full weight was on.
“He just went a long ride away,” Edith Vega told ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB-TV. “I couldn’t even catch up. … I was just freaking out, and I’m, like, ‘Oh my goodness. I hope he’s OK. I hope he’s just enjoying the ride.’”
Unfortunately for young Lorenzo, even the relatively slow-moving conveyor belt was too fast for him to get back to safety, and the video shows him trying to scramble against the belt and over oncoming pieces of luggage.
He remained on the belt for nearly five minutes, coming to a stop only in the bag room run by Transportation Security Administration officials, who looked up from their desks and were shocked to see the youngster.
He was brought to a local hospital to treat his injury.
“I’m thankful he’s alive,” Edith Vega said. “I’m just grateful he’s here. I just hope he gets better.”
