A cleaner was accidentally locked for more than three days in a basement cell under the old Østre Landsret building on Bredgade in Copenhagen. The door slammed behind her on the evening of 16 September. It does not open from the inside. She did not have her phone. This is a building accident, not an arrest.

The high court moved to Nordhavn in 2022. The old rooms are used now and then by Copenhagen City Court and otherwise stand empty. Nobody walked through. Her husband was away. When he came home on Saturday he looked for her. He saw her bicycle by the building and called the police. She was found around 8pm and taken to hospital.

Her employer, Coor, confirmed it. Press judge Jens Stausbøll of Copenhagen City Court confirmed it too, without further comment. Danish reporting through DR and Politiken is the second line: a door, three days, a bicycle, a hospital. She was offered psychological help and asked to return to work.

Since then the cell doors have been checked and the locks changed, so they cannot slam the same way. The incident is from September, reported only on 18 October, after the Danish press had it confirmed at the court.

No crime has been announced and no finding of negligence has been made. It is a woman shut in by an old door, in a nearly empty building, until a bicycle became proof that she was there.

Bredgade is a street of palaces. Under one of them, for three days, nobody heard. The locks are different now. The woman is out.

Image: Trond Arild Ydersbond, Østre Landsret at Bredgade 59, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; the old building, not the September cell.

Sources consulted: Danish cleaner trapped more than three days in an underground cell - NOS; Cleaner accidentally locked in a cell for three days - DR.