China has been in the past months a hotbed of escalator accidents. At least a dozen incidents already have been reported in mainstream media; imagine how many more happen that we are not privy to.
Latest reports on this front adds another name in the list of casualties wrought by elevators.
A three-year-old boy in Nanjing city, named by the Chinese media as Qi Qi, had four of his tiny fingers crushed after they were stuck in a mall escalator. Reports claimed that he jumped onto the elevator, stumbled, and fell face forward.
Thankfully two people nearby saw the whole thing and jumped to his aid, pushing emergency button, preventing further injuries to the little boy. Other people also rushed in to help.
Soon Qi Qi’s parents, who work at a department store and were in their shop at the time of the incident, arrived and knelt beside the boy while a mall security pried his fingers off.
Escalator crushes four fingers of Chinese toddler in an accident; Photo courtesy: People’s Daily Online
The boy held back his tears and remained calm the whole time.
At the hospital where the doctors treated his injuries, they said that the damage to his left had was so severe that he could lose four of his fingers.
Qi Qi’s father talked to reporters and said that, “Apart from his thumb on the left hand, all four fingers were pierced through.”
“His four fingers suffer from a crush injury with the index and ring fingers being the worst,” one of the boy’s doctors said. “We have completed the re-plantation and attached blood vessels and nerves.”
Recovery for the next few days is vital; there was a lot of oil from the escalator, which may cause infection if it is not looked after.
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