We’ve never heard of death by shopping cart before, but two days ago in Shanghai, a man brought his own shopping cart to a supermarket, the kind that doesn’t lock into the teeth of reclined moving walkways, and the result was fatal.

The cart was loaded with 15 boxes of soft drinks when it began sliding down an escalator, at the bottom of which was a woman in her 60s. The force of the impact sent the woman flying six to seven meters into the corner of a wall. She immediately lost consciousness and could not be revived at the local hospital.

Shanghai’s Jiading District police are reminding folks to leave their personal trolleys at home. The carts at supermarkets are specially designed to not slide down inclines, because mass times acceleration, etc.

The Jiading case is currently under investigation.

(H/T Reddit)

Escalators in China: stop it. First you kill a man, now you go after small children?

In Zhongshan, Guangdong province yesterday, a two-year-old boy lost the bottom half of his leg after the shoe he was wearing — a “holed shoe,” as they’re called, a local version of Crocs — got sucked into the side of the escalator he was riding, according to Guangzhou Daily. The boy was sent to the hospital in serious condition, but we’re told he’s currently off the respirator and stable, though it’s unclear whether he’ll regain his ability to walk. This happened on an Otis escalator, if you’d like to know.

Thankfully there’s no video of this incident, but in the video after the jump, you’ll see someone do a reenactment with the shoe: up against the edge of the escalator, it simply disappears, sucked into the cranks and never again seen.

And in Jiangsu, a three-year-old girl slipped near the top of an escalator and got her hand stuck — so completely stuck that rescuers elected to open the escalator’s top panel instead of risking pulling her hand out. The girl is bawling in the video the entire time, by the way. One of the screws, for whatever reason, fails to turn, so 10 minutes later, the escalator’s servicemen arrive and fidget with some other stuff before the girl is finally freed. Her X-ray shows nasty dislocations and broken bones.

If there’s a moral here, it probably doesn’t need to be said. To the videos:

Boy:

Girl:

(H/T Alicia)

Yesterday, a man died after getting stuck inside an escalator. You read that right. Escalator.

This happened at a craft store in Chengdu. A maintenance man surnamed Zhang, 49, was called in to fix an escalator, made by Schindler Elevator Corporation, and to do so, he had to lift up a panel near the top of the moving stairway to reach a lever that would start up the machine. Somehow, though, he fell head-first into the contraption, according to Sichuan Online – Huaxi City Paper. The escalator suddenly roared to life, sucking the man farther into its steel mandible.

Firefighters were called in. They used hydraulic tools to remove two steel plates, and slowly worked to open up space. The man’s legs twitched, but it was apparent he was becoming weaker. By all accounts, it was a strenuous and dramatic operation.

Finally, about two hours after the man first got stuck, he was pulled out. Blood was oozing through his white shirt, both his eyes were shut tight, and he was unresponsive. “He still has a faint heartbeat, let’s try again,” a doctor at the scene said, according to Huaxi City Paper. When they took off his shirt, the damage was apparent: his chest was “mutilated.” After 45 minutes, the doctor shook his head. The cause of death was determined to be internal bleeding and organ damage.

The above-linked website has provided us with a diagram for how the accident occurred:

No, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Neither does the thought of escalators swallowing repairmen and slowly draining the life out of them, though.

(H/T Reddit)