Canadian Woman Dies As Hair,Scarf Got Entangled In Lift

A 48-year-old Canadian woman has died from strangulation after her scarf and hair got caught in an escalator at a Montreal train station.

The freak accident took place just after 9am Thursday morning at the Fabre metro station along Montreal's blue line.

Witnesses told police they saw the unnamed victim struggling to free her scarf after it got lodged in the teeth of an escalator on her way down to the subway platform.

Tragedy: Workers remove the body of a 48-year-old woman after her scarf and hair got caught in an escalator at a Montreal subway station

‘While she was trying to pull up her scarf from the escalator, her hair got caught too and from there, everything got tied up at the end of the escalators,’ said Constable Jean-Pierre Brabant, of the Montreal police.

Commuter Bassam Joubarani told CBC.ca he saw two Good Samaritans rushing to the aid of the 48-year-old woman, who was lying unconscious on her back at the bottom of the moving stairs.

Joubarani recalled seeing the trapped victim still breathing, with half of her body resting on the escalator. 

By the time firefighters and EMS workers arrived on the scene, the unnamed woman went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Société de transport de Montréal (STM), the city's transportation authority, stated that all escalators in Montreal’s subway stations are up to code.

Agency spokeswoman Isabelle Tremblay told Radio Canada that Thursday's freak accident is the first of its kind.

An engineer employed by STM told The Gazette escalators are equipped with safety mechanisms that are supposed to bring the moving stairs to a halt in case someone falls or an object becomes lodged in the teeth.

Each escalator in Montreal’s subway stations features a pair of 'stop' buttons at the top and bottom of the stairway.

Rush hour death: The woman was strangled to death as she was descending an escalator to the subway platform at the Febre station on the blue line

It remains unknown at this time if someone tried to disable the escalator as the woman was trying to free herself.

Investigators are planning to review surveillance video from the Fabre station to determine the circumstances surrounding the accident. They are urging people who witnessed the incident to come forward.

This is not the first time that an escalator caused bodily harm and even death.

In 1989, a 2-year-old girl lost four fingers when her hand got caught in the teeth of an escalator as she was trying to pick up a bag of raisins at another Montreal subway stop.

In 2004, 16 students riding an escalator in a Montreal high school were injured when the moving stairs abruptly stopped.

Last year, a man in Seattle was strangled to death when his shirt got caught in an escalator at a transit station.

Global News reported that in August 2013, a 10-year-old girl’s foot was maimed after being caught in an escalator at a Macy’s department store in in Paramus, New Jersey.