Police say a 5-year-old Texas girl has been hospitalized after she was trapped inside a running washing machine.
Pasadena police say the child "was tumbling pretty fast" for several minutes Tuesday before a customer noticed at Le's Washateria laundromat.
The girl was airlifted to a Houston hospital. Police say she is expected to survive.
Police could not say how the girl became trapped inside the machine nor how it was started. Police say the manager told a woman who had tried to use the machine earlier that it wasn't working correctly and returned her money.
"She was tumbling pretty fast in there," Vance Mitchell with Pasadena Police told Houston TV station KHOU. "One person walked by and said they saw something flopping around in there. They thought it was just a dress or something because it was moving pretty fast."
The laundromat owner says an employee used circuit breakers to stop the machine.
It's unclear who was watching the child. Police are investigating.
—The Associated Press contributed
