Mother crushed to death in escalator accident after rescuing her son
JINGZHOU, CHINA — A tragic escalator accident in China killed a mom right after she pushed her 2-year-old son to safety.
Xiang Liujuan, 30, was at a shopping mall in the Jingzhou city, in China's Hubei province, with her son on Sunday morning. They took the escalator up and when they reached the top of the stairs and stepped off, a faulty metal panel collapsed. Xiang got trapped in the moving escalator, but managed to push her son out of harm's way right before she was killed. Three employees witnessed the incident, and one of them tried to pull Xiang out of the mechanism but failed.
It took nearly four hours for rescue workers to disassemble the escalator and locate Xiang's remains. According to the Wuhan Evening News, the escalator had recently undergone maintenance, but the construction workers hadn't replaced the screws.
The video has circulated online, and netizens in China are outraged about the accident. The BBC quoted microblog user Maqi Yaduo as posting: "This is heartbreaking! Why didn't store employees cordon off or shut down the escalator? The department store definitely bears responsibility for this."
Xiang Liujuan, 30, was at a shopping mall in the Jingzhou city, in China's Hubei province, with her son on Sunday morning. They took the escalator up and when they reached the top of the stairs and stepped off, a faulty metal panel collapsed. Xiang got trapped in the moving escalator, but managed to push her son out of harm's way right before she was killed. Three employees witnessed the incident, and one of them tried to pull Xiang out of the mechanism but failed.
It took nearly four hours for rescue workers to disassemble the escalator and locate Xiang's remains. According to the Wuhan Evening News, the escalator had recently undergone maintenance, but the construction workers hadn't replaced the screws.
The video has circulated online, and netizens in China are outraged about the accident. The BBC quoted microblog user Maqi Yaduo as posting: "This is heartbreaking! Why didn't store employees cordon off or shut down the escalator? The department store definitely bears responsibility for this."
