On Friday, January 4, 2018, tragedy struck and 5 girls were announced dead in a fire in the escape room in Poland. The 5 teen victims— Karolina Barbas, Gosia Tymieniecka, Wiktoria Julia Pietras, and Amelia Wieczorek being the only names released to the media— were celebrating one of the girl’s birthday.
As the investigation continued, it was reported by local Warsaw firefighters that the possible cause of death is due to inhaling smoke from the fire, beginning with an accidental security system and electric wire disasters. However, as the autopsy returned and further investigation took place, evidence showed that a leak of a gas container in a heater had started the fire to blaze and erupt.
The 28-year-old individual who created the escape room, whose name was given only as Milosz S., is currently being held on trial for lack of security safety protocols and could be facing eight years in jail. According to his lawyers, after hearing that the five 15-year-old girls were dead and an employee who attempted to evacuate them was injured, Milosz showed deep grief and shared his condolences to the mourning families, explaining that the incident was unintentional.
The escape room in Poland is a recreation center for individuals to use clues to solve puzzles to escape a room or series of different rooms while they are being held in on a timer. The recreation center is famous across many cities, going by different names: The Panic Room, PaniQ Room, House of Hints, Locked In, and more.
These intellectual escape rooms have been growing in popularity in recent years, exemplified by the film Escape Room, which was released in theaters the same day as this tragic accident
The film is based on the realistic idea of the recreation room, focusing on six main characters who are invited to solve their way out of a famous escape room and win a $10,000 cash prize. As the group work together to find the hidden clues and put their knowledge to the test, the individuals do not realize that they had unintentionally walked straight into a trap: if they do not solve the puzzles on time, they would face a gruesome death posed as a freak accident.
Many individuals on Twitter who have heard of the fire that broke out in the real-life escape room have been piquing interest and suspicion of references to the film. In the movie, the very first room that the group must escape from slowly begins to rise in temperature, resulting in the room boiling hot to the point of a fire erupting and exploding the entire room right after the individuals have successfully escaped.
It is argued that the fire scene in the movie being released on the same day the five victims died in a fire in the recreation room is a big, tragic coincidence. Others who are uneasy about the events that took place believe that the fire in Poland was intentional and the idea sparked by the scene in the film.
Whether the man responsible for the fire in Poland had intentionally committed murder or not is a question that might remain unanswered for the time being; however, the awfully odd coincidence and similarity between the movie and the reality cannot be ignored.
Because of this event, the release of the movie has been delayed in Poland and throughout the European Union.
The girls will be buried together, in a government-paid ceremony
