A man who broke into a Milan bank vault to steal from safety deposit boxes spent nine hours trapped inside after closing time, Italian police said on Thursday.
The 24-year-old Bangladeshi national entered the UniCredit branch on Viale Certosa during opening hours on Thursday evening and made his way to the vault area. Private security guards spotted him on surveillance cameras around 9 pm attempting to break into the deposit boxes.
Police arrived to find themselves unable to reach him. The keys to open the vault were locked inside a time-delay safe that would not open until 8 am the following morning.
Firefighters spent hours breaking into the safe to retrieve the keys. The man was finally extracted around 5 am on Friday in good health, according to local reports. The vault had ventilation systems.
He was arrested on suspicion of attempted aggravated theft.
Investigators are examining surveillance footage to determine how he reached the vault undetected. Initial checks showed he entered the bank during normal business hours.
UniCredit confirmed the attempted break-in in a statement, saying that the alarm systems worked properly and that staff immediately contacted emergency services. The bank said security procedures protected both stored assets and the intruder during the incident.
The man remains in police custody.
