Burglar Breaks Into ‘Escape Room’ Maze, Calls Police To Help Him Find His Way Out

It’s a relatively new craze that people pay to complete — breaking out of an escape room. That wasn’t the case for one man who thought it would be a great idea to instead break in, but that’s exactly what Rye Daniel Wardlaw is accused of doing, reports WREG. The problem? Once he broke in, he couldn’t escape and ended up calling 911 to help him get out. It happened in Vancouver, Washington, at the NW Escape Experience.

“Once we got down there [to the business] and realized the damage was minimal, we just thought it was hilarious,” owner Rob Bertrand told CNN Tuesday. He co-owns the business with his wife, Tamara.

Escape rooms have a time limit and groups can either find and work through clues together or race competitively against each other to see who can find their way out of the maze the fastest. But Wardlaw seemed to want to employ a different kind of strategy when he allegedly broke in on Sunday.

“When he got in he just kind of made himself at home,” Bertrand said. “He actually stole one beer from the refrigerator. The police say he also had a burrito.”

The man also allegedly stole a cell phone and a TV remote. Not the TV…but the remote.

According to Bertrand, the intruder then tried to escape out the back door, but he had damaged it so badly when he broke in that he couldn’t get back out. That’s when he realized he needed help. Wardlaw decided to use the front desk phone and called 911. He must have lost patience because he did manage to make it out the back door, but as luck would have it, he ran right into a police officer who arrested him.

Rye Daniel Wardlaw was arrested on suspicion of three counts of second-degree burglary, reports The Daily News. They also report that he called 911 four times, claiming that he was in the business hiding because someone had broken into his home. But the address that he gave was fake. All in all, he ended up spending only 35 minutes inside the establishment but Bertrand feels that shouldn’t count.

“He did call 911. That’s not a win. He quit,” Bertrand said. “But we started thinking about it and yeah, it’s really funny,” Bertrand added. “I’m proud to say I’m the only escape room in the Northwest that has a 100% capture rate of criminals.”