Like several stories about electric door openers, the occupants had no idea the manual release was inches away.
- A man was trapped inside a Corvette C8 after he failed to use the manual door release.
- Without the key, the Corvette’s electronic door openers won’t work, trapping would-be thieves.
- Police arrested the man after the owner of the vehicle found him trapped inside the Corvette and begging for help.
Imagine stepping out of your car and finding a stranger trapped inside. That’s what happened recently to Julio Solano of Miami, Florida. But the real problem is that the person inside the car has no idea how modern power doors — like the ones on the Corvette C8 — work.
Solano quickly pulled out his phone and began recording the scene. “Can I get out of the car?” asked the occupant, later identified as 33-year-old Ravish Rabindranos. “No, you can’t get out of the car. We’re calling the police,” the Vette owner replied.
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“Without the key, the electrical components of the car didn’t work, and luckily for him, he didn’t know there was a manual door release under the seat,” Solano told Local 10 News.
The car in question is a C8 Corvette, which is equipped with electronic door pop-up devices that activate when the user presses a button inside or outside the car. Of course, they don’t work properly without the key nearby. Instead, people inside the car can use the manual door release device hidden under the seat.
Rabindrano was apparently unaware of the release and ended up not only being “trapped” in the car but later imprisoned. Shortly after Solano found Rabindrano, police arrived on the scene and took him into custody. He now faces charges of theft related to the incident.
As of Tuesday, he remains at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $2,500 bail. Interestingly, this is far from the first time something like this has happened. Although in most cases, it’s not the criminal who ends up stuck, but someone who should have known about the function.
Passengers of cars with these types of doors are often completely clueless about their design. We have reported several cases of owners, renters, and others blaming the car and its design because the manual door release was inches from their fingertips. The manual release is often built into the door handle/button area itself. In at least this case, ignorance may actually help catch the criminal, rather than “entrap” the owner.
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