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. The woman’s body was recovered more than four hours later, according to witnesses who posted pictures on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform. 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. 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. 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 mother quickly held up her child, who was pulled out by one of three women standing nearby while she herself fell into the pit. Weibo users accused the shopping mall of trying to cover up the accident, which was not reported in the Chinese media until hours after it happened.
– 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.)