A German man went through a lot to get his AirPods back. In an incident report, the Volunteer Fire Department Lehrte revealed that a man’s hand got stuck under a train’s armrest while he was trying to retrieve his lost AirPods.

On May 23 at just after 10 p.m. emergency personel responded to a person in distress call at Lehrte station.

Upon their arrival, responders found a man on a Westfalenbahn train traveling toward Braunschweig. The man had his hand “trapped under an armrest, behind the seat, in the side paneling, and was unable to free himself.”

He got into the sticky situation when his AirPods fell off and slipped into a gap in the side paneling. At first, responders thought it would be “relatively simple rescue.” However, it soon became clear that that wouldn’t be the case.

Instead, it became “a complex rescue operation.” This was because “the person’s hand had become so swollen that it could no longer be freed using simple rescue equipment.”

As such, emergency services “had to dismantle a luggage rack and seats, and remove the armrest using a reciprocating saw.” After that was complete, crews used a combination spreader. That allowed them to “open the side paneling wide enough that the person could finally be freed from his predicament.”

The whole ordeal lasted 90 minutes.

After he was freed, the man “was then handed over to the emergency services along with his AirPods, which had also been saved.”

Emergency Crews Blocked Train Area from View Due to “Unpleasant Scenes”

The rescue didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. As crews worked to free the man, “unpleasant scenes with onlookers occurred, prompting the operations command to call the police.”

Passerbys were trying to take cell phone photos of the man amid his rescue. To prevent this, crews were forced to cordon off the area. They also blocked it from view by placing a rescue blanket on the outside of the train.

Additionally, due to the lengthy nature of the rescue, “the train crew evacuated the train and a replacement train was deployed toward Braunschweig.”