I’m still feeling like I’m being pushed.”ĭuring his career, he’s escaped while dangling 225 metres over the Hoover Dam near Las Vegas, wriggled free from a straight-jacket and chains while hanging upside down by his toes from a trapeze over 130 snapping alligators in Florida, and free fallen from a plane 13,000 feet above the ground, wearing a straight-jacket and two pairs of handcuffs before parachuting to safety with only seconds to spare in Japan. I had one set of handcuffs on my wrists that I couldn’t get off,” said Gunnarson. “The cement is extremely hard to work with… the gravel, the sand. Tuesday, he said the cement was must more difficult to endure than the frigid waters of the Red River. His first public stunt was an escape from a straight-jacket while hanging upside down from the old Free Press building in 1982.Ī year later, the then 19-year-old kid from North Kildonan almost lost his life after a botched underwater escape at the Alexander Docks. Gunnarson insisted the escape was the real deal, without tricks or illusions.Ī true homegrown celebrity, Gunnarson has performed all over the world for the past three decades. “Someday I’ll come and join (Houdini) and we can share stories, but I’m sure glad it’s not today,” he said.Ībout 150 people crowded around the box for a close-up look in the parking compound of Two Small Men With Big Hearts Moving Company at 100 Cole Ave., near the Nairn Avenue overpass. He was then able to thrust both hands through openings in the top of the box, pick the lock, pop the lid and burst out gasping for air. Gunnarson said at one point during the escape, he felt some nervousness because he couldn’t get out of one of his hands free of a set of handcuffs.īut on his last attempt, his hand finally slipped loose. I didn’t think it would take that long,” he said after, wiping the hardening cement from his forehead.īefore starting, he had urged the more than 150 people in the crowd to try and hold their breath as long as he was forced to inside the box. on Halloween - marking the 80th anniversary of the death of the legendary magician Houdini. The renowned performer began the amazing escape at exactly 1:26 p.m.
The escape was clocked in at two minutes, 43 seconds.
“I promised my Mom that if I got through this escape I would never do it again.
“I’m glad it’s over,” the Winnipeg-born escape artist said Tuesday, moments after emerging from the box and covered in cold cement. This article was published (6028 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.ĭean Gunnarson did what no one - including his idol, Harry Houdini - has done before, shaking off chains and handcuffs and freeing himself from a Plexiglas box filled with two tonnes of wet cement.
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