California woman gets stuck in chimney trying to sneak into home

[October 21, 2014]  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California woman who tried to sneak into a house through the chimney got stuck and had to be rescued by firefighters, who used dish soap to help extricate the soot-covered intruder, authorities said on Monday.

Local media reports say the woman, identified by police as Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 30, tried on Sunday to enter the Los Angeles-area house of a man who said he met her online, and that when she got stuck she started screaming for help.

Firefighters who arrived found her about 7 feet (2 meters) down the chimney, which they took apart brick by brick down to the roof line, Ventura County Department spokesman Bill Nash said.

"She's stuck in there and obviously she doesn't need bricks falling down on her on top of that," Nash said.

The team of about 10 firefighters spent two hours extracting the woman, pulling her out with straps after lubricating the chimney interior with dish soap, Nash said. She was then taken to a hospital for observation, he said.

Nunez-Figueroa was later arrested for illegal entry and providing false information to a police officer, which involved her misrepresenting her identity, said Ventura County Sheriff's Office spokesman Captain Don Aguilar.

A man who lived in the house in Thousand Oaks, west of Los Angeles, and who gave his name only as Lawrence, told local television station KCBS that he had met the woman online and that it was not the first time she had tried to enter his home.

Aguilar said he could not say why Nunez-Figueroa was trying to enter the house.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

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