Firefighters take two-and-a-half hours to free woman from bowling ball

When youth worker Cherie Beekman took a group of kids for a trip to a bowling alley she didn't come away empty-handed. As an afternoon of bowling came to an end and the kids left for home, she went to return the green ball she had been using – only to find she couldn't. It was stuck on her right thumb and no amount of oil, washing up liquid or ice would shift it.

Beginning to panic, the 33-year-old was rushed from Tenpin bowling alley, at Parrs Wood, in Didsbury, to Wythenshawe fire station, where it took a team of firefighters two-and-a-half hours to cut the ball away using an electric saw, a hacksaw and a chisel. They even resorted to oxygen therapy and a phone call to the ball's manufacturers as the rescue attempt reached desperate measures.



Cherie, from Manchester, said: “It was really funny at first. At no point did I think ' this is going to end badly'. But then I started to get a bit panicky and I couldn't breath properly because I was worrying. A colleague drove me to the fire station. No one knew what the ball was made of so they were on Google and had the manufacturer on the phone trying to help us. I'm not big on knives so I got pretty teary when they brought the saws out, especially as I didn't know which way my thumb was stuck inside the ball.”

Cherie, who had taken a group of 16 children bowling with the Prince's Trust youth charity, turned up at the Brownley Road fire station at around 2.45pm. An ambulance crew was later called to give her the once over. She said: “The firemen were absolutely amazing. They kept me calm and brought me endless cups of coffee. I even had to have oxygen at one point. The thumb is just very swollen and achy.”