'Fifty Shades of Grey' stunt goes wrong: Single Tenerife woman rescued

A passer-by feared he'd come across a kidnapping or another serious crime. It turned out the woman had done it to herself. Photo / Supplied

A woman rescued by Spanish police after she had bound her arms to the steering wheel of her car and almost asphyxiated herself said she had been trying to recreate a scene from the bestselling erotic novel and film series Fifty Shades of Grey.

According to The Telegraph, members of Spain's National Police force were called to a car park at a popular beach in Tenerife after a passer-by heard the car's horn sounding repeatedly as the woman bashed her head against the wheel.

When the witness approached the car by Las Teresitas beach on Monday morning, he saw the woman immobilised and bleeding from her arms in the driver's seat of a Citroën 3, having lashed her wrists to the steering wheel with cable ties and coiled duct tape around her neck. Fearing that this was the scene of a kidnapping or another serious crime, he phoned the police.

The officers had to use a knife to cut the woman free from her state of what appears to have been self-inflicted torture inside her own Citroën 3 car.

"I wanted to recreate a scene from Fifty Shades of Grey but it got out of hand. I don't have a partner and I am alone," the woman, whose identity has not been revealed, told her rescuers, according to island newspaper La Opinión de Tenerife.

Once freed from her vehicle, the woman, reportedly dressed in sporty clothes, was taken to hospital to be treated for cuts and the effects of restricted breathing due to the tightness of the collar she had taped around her neck.

According to a person who was camping on the beach and who spoke to the local newspaper, the woman may have been desperate to be freed for some time as he said he heard a car horn sounding for around two hours.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James features scenes of bondage, discipline and sadomasochism, including the main female character, Anastasia Steele, having her hands bound by her lover Christian Grey.