What a horrible way to go. :(

BEIJING – A Chinese woman died after being trapped in a shopping mall escalator, but not before pushing her 2-year-old son to safety.

Sunday's horrific accident in the central city of Jingzhou was caught on surveillance camera footage that circulated heavily on the Internet in China.

The woman -- identified in media reports as 30-year-old Xiang Liujuan -- is shown reaching the top of the escalator when the section of landing platform she had stepped onto suddenly collapses, trapping her inside the still-moving machinery.

The footage shows that Xiang managed to push her son into the arms of shop attendants near the top of the escalator. The attendants tried to pull her to safety, but Xiang fell into the mechanism and was killed.

The state-run People's Daily's online edition and other media outlets said her body was recovered four hours later, after crews disassembled the escalator.

Although escalator deaths are extremely rare, China's breakneck economic development and sometimes cavalier attitude toward safety, quality control and maintenance have led to frequent industrial accidents such as fires, building and bridge collapses, and ship sinkings or collisions.

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hoichi said:

Yeah saw that, damn....when i was a kid i always had the creeping sensation id get eaten by one of those....
How the hell does an escalator open and eat you?

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sonocativo said:

It doesnt, your shoelace or pant leg gets caught on the stairs and it acts like a meat grinder.

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sheri363 said:

Not in this case it didn't. An access hatch to the gears collapsed under her as she walked off the escalator. This is terrible and a stuff for nightmares.

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A Nihilist said:

Well I have to wonder if I was the child I'd rather go down with the mother because that's gotta be hard now having to live without your mother.

And I have to wonder, what happened to the child? How do you get the next of kin, do you rummage through what's left of Mom's purse?

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sheri363 said:

Ummm I guess you didn't read the entire story. The father was also there but was elsewhere in the mall… I can't even think about it without feeling horrified.

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BEIJING – A Chinese woman died after being trapped in a shopping mall escalator, but not before pushing her 2-year-old son to safety.

Sunday's horrific accident in the central city of Jingzhou was caught on surveillance camera footage that circulated heavily on the Internet in China.

The woman -- identified in media reports as 30-year-old Xiang Liujuan -- is shown reaching the top of the escalator when the section of landing platform she had stepped onto suddenly collapses, trapping her inside the still-moving machinery.

The footage shows that Xiang managed to push her son into the arms of shop attendants near the top of the escalator. The attendants tried to pull her to safety, but Xiang fell into the mechanism and was killed.

The state-run People's Daily's online edition and other media outlets said her body was recovered four hours later, after crews disassembled the escalator.

Although escalator deaths are extremely rare, China's breakneck economic development and sometimes cavalier attitude toward safety, quality control and maintenance have led to frequent industrial accidents such as fires, building and bridge collapses, and ship sinkings or collisions.

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sheri363 said:

Ummm I guess you didn't read the entire story. The father was also there but was elsewhere in the mall… I can't even think about it without feeling horrified.

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A Nihilist said:

Here's the entire text from the OP's link. Where is the mention of the father?

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Bebonang said:

I don't see anything on the article about the father being there. How did you know he was there? Show me the different link.

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By: Julie Makinen Los Angeles Times, Published on Mon Jul 27 2015
BEIJING—The scene can only be described as horrific.
On an otherwise unremarkable morning, a woman is riding up a shopping centre escalator in central China with her son. When she reaches the top and begins to disembark, she steps onto a metal footplate covering the machinery. The plate collapses, dropping the woman into the gears. She shoves her child into the arms of two mall employees and is crushed to death.
Security camera video of the incident hit Chinese social media late Sunday, hours after it occurred, with local media identifying the woman as Xiang Liujuan, 30. In a rapidly urbanizing country still plagued by shoddy construction standards and poor building maintenance, the news spread like wildfire.
But instead of an outpouring of sympathy for Xiang, or questions for the mall or government inspectors about why the escalator — which was known to be missing some parts — was still in operation, her family was initially met with a large measure of reproach, skepticism and blame from some official media outlets and Internet users.
“Pay Attention to This Life-Saving Button,” the People’s Daily advised, explaining to readers where the emergency stop button was located on escalators. Others, responding to a web posting by Xiang’s sister-in-law about the incident, questioned whether the family was publicizing the tragedy in an effort to extract financial compensation from the store, or had even “scripted” the event.
But anger at the mall and safety inspectors mounted as news of the Sunday morning incident in the city of Jingzhou, 209 kilometres west of Wuhan in Hubei province, spread. “What brand was that escalator?” asked one commenter online. Another, describing the incident as heartbreaking, said the store must bear responsibility.
According to Xiang’s sister-in-law, Xiang apparently was unaware of any problem with the escalator until she and her son had already stepped onto the moving staircase, which was still in motion and not blocked off in any way.
People questioned why the escalator was allowed to keep running or was not cordoned off if it posed a danger. Two employees, seen in the closed-circuit video circulated online, were standing at the top of the escalator, apparently trying to talk with Xiang as she and her son rode up.

They were the workers who helped Xiang’s son escape the gears as his mother was crushed. (Xiang’s husband was in the shopping centre at the time of the incident but was on another floor when she was killed.) It was unclear whether the workers knew the footplate was insecure, though they are seen standing to the side of the metal panel, near the handrail of the escalator.
The Wuhan Evening News quoted an escalator expert as saying that the conveyors typically have safety mechanisms that should automatically stop the machinery if the metal plate is opened. It was unclear whether this escalator was equipped with such a feature.
The local safety inspection bureau told the Shanghai-based publication The Paper that there was no record of the escalator being under repair at the time of the accident. The state-run New China News Agency said local authorities were investigating.
Xiang’s sister-in-law, in a post on the social media platform Weibo, appealed for help from the media, saying that after Xiang was killed, the shopping centre continued to function as normal, with customers on lower floors oblivious to the incident and other possible dangers.
China has seen repeated reports of malfunctioning elevators and escalators killing or injuring people. Last September, a video of a student crushed by an elevator in the southern city of Xiamen was widely circulated online. In January, a doctor died after he and a patient got into a physical quarrel and bumped into an elevator door, causing it to open. Both men fell into the shaft and died.
The New China News Agency reported last fall that 11 people had been arrested on suspicion of selling more than 100 counterfeit brand name elevators across China.

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hoichi said:

Yeah saw that, damn....when i was a kid i always had the creeping sensation id get eaten by one of those....
How the hell does an escalator open and eat you?

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Bebonang said:

Oh, my. This is terrible and tragedy. I am wondering about two young women standing by the escalator and they were watching her come up with her son before the collapse. I don't know if the two women were looking at the mother and the child or looking at someone else down on the floor. One of them tried to hold the woman's hand to pull her up but it was not easy to get her up out of the escalator.

I bet this is the first time to have an escalator being collapse under their weight.

Rest In Peace, Xiang Liujuan.

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