The 2019 Escape Room Tragedy 💔 In 2019 a tragedy took place in Koszalin, Poland, when five 15-year-old girls lost their lives while celebrating a birthday at an escape room. The investigation began after a fire broke out inside the building, trapping the teenagers before they could escape. Emergency services responded quickly, but the intense fire and smoke made rescue efforts extremely difficult. Investigators discovered the escape room was located on the first floor, with the main exit cut off by the fire. The case triggered a major criminal investigation into the safety standards and operation of escape rooms across Poland. Detectives examined whether negligence, building code violations, and inadequate fire safety measures contributed to the deaths. Evidence revealed there were significant concerns about emergency exits, fire protection, and the materials used inside the attraction. The escape room's operator was charged in connection with the tragedy. Authorities carried out inspections of hundreds of escape rooms nationwide, leading to the temporary closure of many venues that failed safety checks. The tragedy remains one of Poland's most devastating accidental death investigations, highlighting how overlooked safety failures can have catastrophic consequences. #truecrime #crimetok #crime true crime story true crime storytime disaster

The whole point of an escape room is that you can't get out, but what if a huge fire breaks out and the staff have already left? It was the 4th of July 2019 in Cozolin in Poland, and it had literally just been Christmas and New Year the weather was really bad and nobody had any money. And I bet some of you are watching with January birthdays that can totally relate to this when you want to do something for your birthday, you kind of put it in the group chat and it's just crickets, because nobody wants to spend any money in January. Well, this one group of teenage girls were actually doing a solid for their January birthday friend. They were like, "Look, it's awful weather. Let's get together and do like a fun activity indoors." This group of 515 year old girls decided to do an escape room. I personally love an escape room. I really love the crystal maze when it Manchester. These girls were Amelia Weizorik, Gosea Timianekka, Julia Pollack, Carolina Barabass and Victoria Petras. And as is the nature of escape rooms, you expect to be trapped inside. They never expected to be trapped inside. Now, escape rooms were pretty new in Poland at this time, and the fact that customers in escape rooms are obviously locked inside a room, it does make things kind of dangerous. Like to think they would have like emergency procedures for if something goes wrong, but while the girls were inside solving a puzzle to literally find the missing door handle of this room, just after 5pm, they smelt smoke. Now, it was initially thought that the premises essentially had like bottle gas for heating purposes, and a small leak had suddenly caused a big problem. As the girls started to realize actually this isn't part of the escape room, it's not like an immersive experience. They haven't set a fire on purpose. Their hearts started to race, and they started to wring people frantically. They started to wring emergency services, and they explained that they were trapped in an escape room, and one of the girls started to wring her dad. All she could manage to say to him on the phone was "Dad fire!" What do you do when you're literally locked inside a burning building, like it must have been hell on earth? And imagine how powerless that dad must have felt. One of the most wild things to me in this case is that the employee on duty, the one that was responsible for these children in that activity room, had actually left the building to go and do something at a nearby shop. By the time he got back, it was far too late. The flames were burning through this building. And the fire had spread so much he couldn't even get through to release the girls. The fire brigade raced over there at 521 to try and tackle the blaze, but sadly it was far too late. But as people watched from nearby buildings, they were absolutely devastated, to see that the girls did not leave that building on foot. They left in body backs. All five of those children had died in what should have been a safe professional environment. A fun activity they should have been able to do to celebrate their friends birthday. The member of staff was also injured, but it was not life threatening, although he did need to be treated for severe burns. Turns out that if that employee had been there and noticed the fire before it spread, he could have revealed that there was actually a hidden passage behind a fake fireplace that would have led the girls to an exit. They obviously did a full investigation into the cause of the fire and the safety of the premises. And it didn't take an expert to deem it was unsafe. The building actually had not been cleared for use as a commercial premises and for people to charge. These were the designer and organizer of the escape room, the business owner, another family business member and the employee on the day. And the girls' parents really didn't buy this whole explanation of like a gas leak. They were like it's much more likely that this was some kind of exposed flame like a burning candle or a cigarette that hadn't been put out. Everybody who was charged in this case essentially tried to blame each other. It all got pretty short jail time it was around one to two years in prison. For more similar cases to this, I do post a brand new episode on my podcast The Born Investigation every single week.