A woman was killed after she plunged through flooring over an escalator in a Chinese department store, thrusting her toddler to safety as she fell to her death, reports said yesterday.
Xiang Liujuan, 30, was holding her son in front of her as they went up the stairway on Saturday, the Wuhan Evening News said. Security camera footage of the incident posted online showed a panel in the floor giving way as Xiang stepped off the escalator.
As she fell halfway through, she pushed her son forward and a nearby shop assistant dragged him to safety.
However, the escalator continued rolling and several seconds later, Xiang is seen disappearing downward into the mechanism, despite one of the staff briefly grabbing her hand.
It took firefighters more than four hours to cut open the machine and recover the woman, who showed “no signs of life,” the newspaper report said.
The footage shows employees standing at the top of the escalator as the mother and child approach.
Maintenance had just been carried out on the escalator at the Anliang department store in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, and workers forgot to screw the access cover back into place, the newspaper cited an unnamed source as saying.
The accident was one of the most-discussed topics on China’s Sina Weibo microblogging Web site yesterday, with more than 6.6 million views.
Most comments expressed fury at department store management.
“Why did the staffers not stop customers at the entrance to the machine, or just turn it off?” one blogger wrote. “The department store is definitely responsible.”
Others were moved by the woman’s final actions.
“I was appalled when I saw her sink, and at the same time, felt the greatness of maternal love — the mother wasted no time pushing the child out when it happened,” another blogger wrote.
In 2012, a nine-year-old boy was killed after he got stuck in an escalator at a Beijing department store as shoppers looked on.
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