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The accident was recorded by a surveillance camera at the mall. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Woman killed after shopping mall escalator collapses under her feet in central China

Mother managed to push her son to safety before she fell into machinery in shopping mall

A woman was killed in central China when part of an escalator she was travelling on in a shopping centre collapsed under her feet and she fell through the gap.

The woman aged 30 managed to push her two-year-old boy to safety at the top of the escalator before she fell into the machinery, the Wuhan Evening News reported.

Surveillance video at the shopping mall in Jingzhou shows the woman holding her son as she prepares to get off the escalator when a footplate collapses under her feet.

Stuck in the hole and with only her upper body above the structure, she pushed her son forwards and he was caught by a shopping assistant standing near the top of the escalator.

READ MORE: Chinese escalator horror: Mall staff 'knew footplate was broken' before mother died

The woman fell beneath the floor only a few seconds later after another shopping assistant tried to grab her arm and failed.

The South China Morning Post has not published the video as some readers might find it disturbing.

Relatives said the woman, who was only identified by her surname Xiang, was shopping with her husband on Sunday when the accident happened.

The husband was walking behind her wife and son and had yet to take the escalator from the fifth to the sixth floor, the newspaper reported.

An unnamed sourced was quoted as saying that the accident was probably caused by workers failing to tighten screws on a footplate in the escalator during maintenance.

The shopping mall has yet to make a formal statement about the accident.

It took rescuers nearly four hours to recover the body of the woman, according to the newspaper.

Twelve people were injured last year after an escalator on the subway in Shanghai started going backwards.

One boy was killed in a similar accident on Beijing’s subway in 2011 when an escalator went into reverse.

 

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