China escalator swallows toddler’s mother – Regional

Earlier this year, six-year-old Nurhayada Sofia died at a shopping centre in Malaysia when she fell five floors having being dragged over the edge by an escalator.

Surveillance footage captured the moment Xiang Liujuan stepped off the escalator with her two-year-old son when the footplate collapsed beneath them.

She managed to push her son to safety, where he was grabbed by a bystander.

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.

It took rescuers almost four hours to recover the body of the woman, as said by the newspaper.

The video shows the mother and boy reaching the top of the escalator, before the floor in front collapses.

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 accident became the most searched-for topic on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, on Monday, prompting a flurry of questions about whether the escalator had been properly maintained and operated.

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