Beijing (AFP) - A woman was killed after she plunged through flooring over an escalator in a Chinese department store, reports said Monday, thrusting her toddler to safety as she fell to her death. 
 
 Xiang Liujuan, 30, was holding her son in front of her as they went up the stairway on Saturday, the Wuhan Evening News said. 
 
 Security camera footage of the incident posted online showed a panel in the floor giving way as Xiang stepped off the escalator. As she fell half-way through she pushed her son forward, and a nearby shop assistant dragged him to safety. 
 
 But the escalator continued rolling, and several seconds later Xiang is seen disappearing downwards into the mechanism, despite one of the staff briefly grabbing her hand. 
 
 It took firefighters more than four hours to cut open the machine and recover the woman, who showed "no signs of life", the newspaper report said. 
 
 The footage shows employees standing at the top of the escalator as the mother and child approach. 
 
 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 was one of the top topics on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Monday with more than 6.6 million views. 
 
 Most comments expressed fury at the shop management. 
 
 "Why didn't the staffers stop customers at the entrance to the machine or just turn it off?" wrote one. "The department store is definitely responsible." 
 
 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. 
 
 China is prone to safety accidents as regulations and standards are often flouted and enforcement is lax, sometimes due to corruption. 
 
 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 during the rush hour. ||||| Two staff members of a Chinese shopping mall who saw a mother fall into the machinery of a moving escalator almost had the same thing happen to them just minutes earlier, newly released surveillance footage has shown. 
 
 The mother, who was with her toddler, managed to save the boy before she plunged into a dark pit created by the sudden collapse of a metal panel at the top of the escalator in the Anliang Department Store in Jingzhou, Hubei on Sunday. 
 
 Her body was retrieved about four hours later from machinery underneath the moving stairway after rescuers cut open the treads of the machine, mainland media reports said. 
 
 According to surveillance footage aired on state broadcaster CCTV, two female staff members discovered the metal panel was loose about five minutes before the accident that killed the mother, Xiang Liujuan, 31 – but failed to stop the machine. 
 
 In a two-minute video showing the “almost accident”, one of the two staff members can be seen travelling down from the seventh floor to the sixth floor. Upon realising she has forgotten something, she can be seen taking the escalator back up, according to CCTV, while her colleague waits for her at the top, standing on the panel that collapsed minutes later. 
 
 When the duo walk away from the escalator, the metal panel tilts up on one side and the pair almost fall through. 
 
 Startled, one of them says to the other, “There is a problem, here. (We) almost fell down,” CCTV reported. 
 
 While the pair went to notify mall managers, they did not turn off the mechanism. 
 
 The footage shows the couple returning to the scene of the accident, with one testing the loose metal panel with her foot. Still, they do not stop off the escalator. Less than a minute later, Xiang and her boy appear and the tragic accident ensues. 
 
 According to the footage, the two women point to the loose panel and warn Xiang of the problem when she and her son are halfway up. Xiang then picks up the boy just before they reach the top, handing him to the women as the panel collapses, before slipping to her death. It is not clear why Xiang’s husband remained at the bottom of the escalator instead of riding with them. 
 
 Comments ||||| A woman was killed after being stuck and swallowed by an escalator in a shopping mall in Jingzhou. The seconds-long security camera footage of the incident posted online shocked the public and stirred up heated discussion over escalator safety. 
 
 HUMAN error is to blame for the horrifying escalator accident in a shopping mall in Jingzhou city, middle China's Hubei Province, which killed a 30-year-old woman on Sunday, local agencies said late on Monday evening. 
 
 Five minutes before the accident, mall staff discovered that a shaft cover on the end of the ascending escalator was loose but they did not stop the escalator, said Chen Guanxin, director of the local work safety authority at the news conference. 
 
 The woman, unaware of the situation, fell under the escalator and landed in a gap inside and was instantly killed, the official said. 
 
 It was not until the woman was already halfway on the escalator with her 2-year-old son when some of the mall staff members yelled and warned her. It was a bit late for the warning as she fell to her death. 
 
 Fire fighters spent four hours cutting open the facility at the Anliang department store to pull her out. 
 
 The victim, Xiang Liujuan, was a full-time housewife. 
 
 The seconds-long security camera footage showed the victim was holding her son in front of her as they went up the stairway. They were the only two people on the ascending escalator when the unfortunate incident happened around 10am on Sunday. 
 
 Several female mall attendants were waiting on the end of the escalator as they approached the upper floor. 
 
 The mother then lifted up her son and pushed him forward as a nearby shop assistant dragged him to safety. Nearly at the same moment, the panel she stepped on collapsed. The woman's lower body was immediately stuck by the running escalator. 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. 
 
 The woman's sister-in-law, who identified herself as kkcake, said on Weibo, that the victim was shopping with her son and husband before the tragedy. 
 
 "The warning from the store attendants was already too late. It's impossible for a mom travelling with a kid to walk back on an ascending escalator," the sister-in-law said on Weibo. 
 
 The accident was one of the top topics on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Monday with more than 6.6 million views.
– It's a gruesome way to go: A 30-year-old mother was killed in central China over the weekend when the metal floor panel that sat between the top of a mall escalator and the floor beyond gave way as she and her son exited the escalator. But as the woman, identified as Xiang Liujuan, fell halfway through, she pushed her toddler son to safety. The South China Morning Post reports a woman standing nearby caught him, moved him to the side, then managed to briefly grab Xiang's hand. But seconds later she was gone, pulled in by the machinery. Most details come from outlets citing the Wuhan Evening News, as well as an extremely graphic video of the incident. The Hong Kong Free Press reports by way of the Evening News that Xiang's entire body was "sucked into" the escalator's treads. Those treads had to be cut in order for her to be removed, in a process that took roughly four hours. Her husband was reportedly on the scene; he had apparently been with his wife and son but hadn't gotten on the escalator yet. AFP cites an anonymous Evening News source who claims work had recently been completed on the escalator and that the maintenance workers failed to properly screw in the access panel. The incident occurred at the Anliang department store in Jingzhou, Hubei province, and public opinion seemed to be split between faulting store management for not immediately turning the escalator off and praising the mother's dying act of love. (A woman was killed last year after her scarf and hair became caught in a Montreal subway.)