MOST HORRIFYING ESCALATOR DEATHS

Mirror Online

 

Most horrifying escalator deaths - scalped, swallowed alive and strangled to death

WARNING - graphic content: From the mother eaten alive by machinery to the British holiday maker sucked into a hole, there have been some truly awful tragedies

ByFrances KindonFeatures Editor

09:52, 4 Feb 2021

 

With enough power behind them to lift a small car, everyday escalators can easily prove lethal if something goes wrong.

 

From toddlers being thrown over the side to shoppers being swallowed whole, the moving stairways have been responsible for some truly harrowing deaths.

 

When used and operated correctly, of course, they are perfectly safe. But throw in faults, maintenance problems, accidents or user error and the ascension between floors can turn into a deadly journey.

 

Swallowed alive

 

In June 2015, CCTV footage captured the horrifying moment mother Xiang Liujuan stepped off an ascending escalator in a Chinese shopping mall as the footplate suddenly collapsed beneath her.

 

Group of shoppers fall like dominoes after escalator suddenly changes direction

 

Horror as tragic young girl age 3 dies after falling off an escalator in shopping centre

 

Xiang, 30, managed to throw her two-year-old son to safety and he was dragged away by a shopping assistant, but not before he witnessed his mother being sucked into the machinery to her death.

 

Maintenance had reportedly just been carried out on the escalator in Hubei province.

 

Only when the woman was halfway up the escalator with her son did the staff members yell and warn her.

 

Unfortunately, by that time it was too late.

 

"The warning from the store attendants was already too late. It's impossible for a mom traveling with a kid to walk back on an ascending escalator," the victim's sister-in-law wrote on her Weibo account.

 

It reportedly took four hours for firefighters to retrieve her body from the cogs of the machine.

 

Scalped and strangled

 

Naima Rharouity died at Fabre Metro station in Montreal, Canada

 

In January 2014, mother of two Naima Rharouity died when she fell while travelling on an escalator in Montreal.

 

She suffered an agonising death after her scarf, coat and hair got stuck in the teeth of an escalator at Montreal's Fabre Metro station.

 

The coroner found that the gruesome injuries caused by her trapped hair contributed to her horrible death.

 

"The woman was strangled by her scarf and her scalp was lacerated by the teeth of the escalator before the machine stopped," the report concluded.

 

Crushed by machinery

 

York professor Sally Baldwin, 62, died after falling through a gap that suddenly appeared in a moving walkway at Rome's Tiburtina railway station in 2003.

 

The British academic was travelling with friends when a cavity in the structure opened up and she was trapped in the machine's moving cogs.

 

"As we understand it, part of the escalator came away from the main structure, creating a cavity about 30 to 50cm wide, and the British woman and another person fell in," Italian rail officials said at the time.

 

Recalling the horrifying scene, one onlooker told The Telegraph: "I heard her scream. It was horrible. I saw a man trying to help her and he fell into the hole as well."

 

And another added: "The woman who died was in front of me. I saw her fall down below. I was terrified. There was a moment of general panic. Only later did I realise that it was a miracle that I survived."

 

And her ex-husband Jack Baldwin, who was party of their group, told how one minute Sally was there, the next she was gone.

 

He told the York Press: "We were walking together on the walkway, which was stopped.

 

"All of a sudden I heard a terrible scream and when I turned round (Professor Baldwin) wasn't there anymore - she had just disappeared and had been crushed by the machinery."

 

Child plunged five floors

 

Six-year-old Nurhayada Sofia  died at a shopping centre in Malaysia  when she fell five floors after being dragged over the edge by an escalator.

 

Chilling CCTV footage  caught the moment little Nurhayada Sofia plunged several floors at a shopping mall in Malaysia after appearing to get caught on an escalator rail.

 

The child died on impact from horrific injuries to the head and her father, Musa, has told how it happened while he was on the phone to his wife.

 

Speaking to the Malaysia Star, he said: "I called my wife on her mobile phone and asked her where she was.

 

“She said she had taken the children out shopping with a friend.

 

As the couple spoke, little Nurhayada moved across to the top of an escalator on the second floor of the Kenanga Wholesale City mall in Pudu.

 

CCTV footage  showed the child playing with the handrail for a few seconds, before she was suddenly pulled up and over the side - falling five floors to the basement through a gap.

 

Musa said: "I heard a commotion and the line was cut.

 

“Minutes later, my wife called back to say that Nurhayada was dead. I just couldn’t believe it.”