Comedian Laura Clery is recalling a “terrifying” incident that she claims “nearly killed” her.
“Most terrifying night of my life as a single mom,” Clery wrote via Instagram on Friday, May 22. “I was home alone getting ready for bed when my 600 pound fridge slammed into me and pinned me against the counter. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe right. Was impossible to get off and I could feel myself losing consciousness. My kids were in the house.”
She continued, “I genuinely didn’t know if I was getting out of that alive. Thank God my phone was in my pocket and I was able to call 911. Thank god it didn’t fall on my kids. It took three firefighters to lift it off me. I’m still shaking.”
Alongside the message, Clery shared a clip featuring the comedian being transported into an ambulance and asking paramedics whether she “broke anything” in the accident. The paramedics explained that they were taking her to a trauma center.
“As a single mom, my biggest fear came true. I was very seriously hurt and stuck while home alone with my two young kids. Thank GOD I was able to call 911,” she wrote over the video. “Thank. God.”
Clery elaborated on the incident in a Patreon post, explaining that her son “decided to climb” the fridge. (Clery shares her two children with ex-husband Stephen Hilton.)
“I saw it shift slightly, just enough to make my stomach drop,” she wrote. “So I ran over to push it back into place. I thought I’d just nudge it in and move on with my day like a woman who has control over her life. The second I pushed it, it came down on me. Not slowly. Not in a way where I could catch it or jump out of the way. It just fell.”
Clery explained that she began to have trouble breathing.
“I could feel it getting harder to inhale, like my body was just slowly deciding to shut down,” she wrote. “And I’m just there, pinned under a fridge, thinking this is the dumbest way anyone has ever died.”
Ultimately, she called 911 and said it took three firefighters to lift the fridge off of her. In a Facebook post on Friday, Clery wrote that she’s “feeling so deeply grateful that we’re all OK and also not OK…”
“I keep getting these flashbacks that just hit out of nowhere,” she wrote. “Like I’m right back under that fridge, stuck, unable to move, my kids in the house. My brain keeps looping all the “what ifs” on repeat. What if I had gone unconscious. What if it had been my son under there. What if he had run out of the house while I was trapped.”
She continued, “The second they got the fridge off me, I was just screaming for him. He was in the backyard, watching through the glass, scared. But my mind keeps going to all the ways that could have gone differently. It’s such a weird place to be… feeling overwhelmingly grateful and completely shaken at the same time. My body is wrecked, my lower back is f***ed, but nothing is broken, which feels like a miracle.”
Clery went on to wonder if any of her followers had tried EMDR therapy for something similar, writing that she’s “just… processing.” In a separate Facebook post, Clery wrote that she wanted to “f***ing sue” the contractors who installed her fridge.
“This is a nearly 600 pound stainless steel French door fridge that was NOT properly mounted into the wall,” she wrote. “Because of that, my 7 year old was able to pull it forward, and when I tried to push it back, it fell on me and was fully crushing me. It nearly killed me. And it could have absolutely killed my child. This should never have been possible. This was negligence.”
