French bank staff forget 91-year-old locked in vault Eventually, they got through to a BNP contact in Paris who "accepted to send two security agents to go and check" whether she was in the building. "We didn't hold out much hope, but you never know...," he said. When they opened the front door, the agents "heard a little voice coming from the safe vault," said the police chief. They finally managed to open the vault at 10am on Sunday morning. According to police, the pensioner was calmly sitting inside in the dark, was in good shape and "bore no grudge." Suffering from mild dehydration, she spent the next couple of hours in a nearby hospital. An investigation has been launched to determine why the bank's internal alarm failed to go off. "It's a rather sad affair but which ends well," said the vice prosecutor of Rennes, Jean-Pierre Ollivaux. He said that as far as he knew there was no "criminal fault committed for forgetting to check if the bank was really empty before shutting the door."