A woman says her five-year-old son got stuck in the seatbelt of their GMC. Nobody could figure out how to get him out.
Alissa (@lissyinthesky), a mom of six, recorded her son sitting in the Yukon after she says he got “stuck to his seat.”
She explains that he had pulled the seatbelt over himself and buckled it behind the seat. Somehow, the belt locked with him still underneath it.
“Now it’s locked, and there’s nothing I can do to get it to release,” she says.
Alissa says her husband had already spent about 20 minutes trying to get the belt loose before they considered other options.
At one point, he even got bolt cutters. He also tried to find a star bit to undo a bolt and remove part of the door panel, but they couldn’t find one that fit.
So they headed to AutoZone.
“GMC, you did an excellent job of having very firm seatbelts,” Alissa quips.
Thankfully, they didn’t end up having to cut the belt. Alissa says her son eventually got out, and AutoZone saved the day. As of this writing, her clip has more than 1.8 million views.
Why Did The Seatbelt Lock Like That?
While what happened to Alissa’s son might sound strange, the locking itself is a standard seatbelt feature.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says most seatbelts have a mechanism that can engage when the belt is pulled all the way out of the retractor. Once that happens, the belt can keep tightening as it feeds back in, but it may not pull back out again until it fully retracts. The feature exists to help secure child car seats.
Unfortunately, the same safety mechanism can also cause a child to get stuck.
NHTSA specifically warns about what it calls “seatbelt entanglement,” saying children can pull a belt all the way out and wind up with it around their head, neck, or waist. Once the locking mode kicks in, the agency says a child may not be able to free themselves.
That’s pretty close to what Alissa says happened in her GMC. NHTSA’s website is filled with prevention tips to keep this from happening. For instance, it tells parents to teach children that seatbelts aren’t toys, make sure kids are properly restrained, and keep an eye on unused belts within their reach. For an unused belt, NHTSA recommends buckling it, pulling it all the way out, and then feeding the excess back into the retractor so a child can’t keep pulling it out.
One thing we can’t tell from Alissa’s video alone is whether the seatbelt itself was the problem.
Without knowing the exact GMC model or inspecting the belt, there’s no way to tell whether it was malfunctioning or behaving exactly as designed. But the fact that it locked after being pulled around her son is not, by itself, evidence of a defect.
Gallery: 2026 GMC Yukon Denali Ultimate Review
Viewers Offer Advice
Many viewers immediately focused on how Alissa’s son was sitting in the backseat.
“Once you have removed him from the seat, then 1) adjust the headrest bc it’s not [in] the correct place. 2) he should be in a 5-point harness still. Good luck!!” one person wrote.
Others were more critical.
“This is completely the parents’ fault. That child is no way old enough to be in a booster. Do better,” one said.
“If the booster was used right, this wouldn’t have happened,” another commenter added.
Several people, though, were less interested in debating the booster and more interested in getting him unstuck.
“Take the headrest off,” one person suggested.
“If you removed the headrest, you’d have more ease to bring the belt back to position,” another wrote.
Someone else had a similar idea.
“Could you take the headrest off, and move the seat up, either more inclined or slide it forward?”
“Take care off the headrest, and you should be able to pull it back over,” another commenter wrote.
Some viewers were more curious about the boy’s reaction.
“Is he smirking??” one person asked.
Motor1 contacted Alissa via TikTok direct message. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.
