Mom Saves Son Before Being Killed by Escalator

It showed the victim was holding her son in front of her as they went up the stairway, being the only passengers on the ascending escalator when the accident took place around 10am yesterday.

A horrifying escalator accident in a shopping mall in central China killed a young woman on Sunday.

Gruesome CCTV video of mum Xiang Liuhjuan being sucked through an escalator while pushing her baby son to safety shocked the world. The escalator continued rolling, and several seconds later she was seen disappearing downwards into the mechanism, despite one of the staff briefly grabbing her hand.

In response to this tragedy, many are calling for tighter regulations on construction in China, as they believe human error and carelessness contributed to the unsafe conditions that created the possibility of death.

When they later returned to the escalator, Xiang Liujuan and her son were just on their way up.

On Monday night Chen Guanxin, the head of the Jingzhou Work Safety Administration in the Hubei province, said that staff had discovered the escalator’s footplate had become loose five minutes before Xiang died, state news agency Xinhua reports. It ranked 35th among 48 other service providers in the province. He suffered multiple trauma, including a fractured arm, and was hospitalized.

Last year, Shenlong sold 8,861 products, including 2,124 units of escalators and moving sidewalks.

In another instance, a 13-year-old boy was killed and more than 20 people injured in July 2011 in a underground station in Beijing when an escalator reversed direction during the peak hour.

Frustrated with the mall’s handling of the situation, Xiang’s family members have gone online to call for a thorough and transparent investigation.

Firefighters spent four hours cutting the escalator open to retrieve her body.