The father of three-year-old Ethan couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his son happily playing inside the toy hook machine at a shopping center in south-east Queensland, Australia, on Saturday night.

Three-year-old Ethan escaped for a few seconds from his father’s supervision and entered the machine by climbing through the window where the winners collect their prizes.

Ethan’s father, Timothy Hopper, said his son was playing with the machine before he briefly lost sight of it while talking to the rest of his children.

He immediately called the company that owns the machine. “They asked me how much money I had put in the machine [και αν τα χρήματα ήταν] stuck. My response was ‘the only thing stuck in the machine is my child, I’d love to have him back’.

Senior Constable Stuart Power and his colleagues after asking the three-year-old to head to the corner of the machine and cover his eyes then smashed the machine’s window.

The three-year-old broke free, then told his father: “Don’t worry dad, I won’t do it again.”