Escalator death sparks fury in China

A Chinese woman died after being trapped in a shopping mall escalator, but not before pushing her two-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.

Maintenance had just been carried out on the escalator at the Anliang department store in Jingzhou in the central province of Hubei, and workers forgot to screw the access cover back into place, the newspaper cited an unnamed source as saying.

The incident has sparked fury on Chinese social media, with many demanding answers from the shopping centre’s management. As of last night, microblog posts on the subject had attracted more than 20m views. Most comments expressed fury at the shop management.

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,” said one.

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.

In 2012, a nine-year-old boy was killed after he got stuck in an escalator at a Beijing department store as horrified shoppers looked on. In July 2011, a 13-year-old boy was killed and more than 20 others injured when an escalator in a Beijing underground station suddenly reversed direction.