A two-year-old boy had his arm ripped off by an escalator. The child was at a shopping centre in Russia with his mother, who “briefly lost sight of him”.
He made his way to the escalator, which “chewed” his right hand and lower arm, before tearing them off. A pharmacist, Anastasia, rushed to help him and told local news: “I heard screams, ran over, and saw a boy standing there with his arm torn off. There wasn’t much blood, basically, his arm [up to the elbow] was in the escalator.” She said the boy was crying, and a man put a tourniquet on his upper arm to stop any bleeding. The man said the boy’s mother was screaming. He added: “I saw the child standing there without an arm. I applied a tourniquet, then we bandaged him up. We waited for the ambulance and retrieved the arm. The child didn’t lose consciousness – he held on until the very end.”
Anastasia gave the paramedics ice to transport the arm and the boy was taken to hospital, but surgeons failed to reattach his limb due to the damage.
The boy’s father said: “Our son is in intensive care, we are not allowed to see him yet. But we know he has been brought out of a medically induced coma.
“I wasn’t there at the time — I was rushing from work. My wife was alone with the two children. I still don’t fully understand how it happened.
“When I arrived, we were trying together to get [his severed arm] out together. We pulled it from the side of the escalator, from the compartment where all sorts of rubbish falls.
“It got stuck somewhere. Half of the escalator was dismantled under the handrail on the right side. Most likely, he put his hand on the step and it folded in.”
Another account said the mother “was holding the child’s hand when he squatted down and put his hand into the escalator”.
The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case and is investigating how the incident happened at the Botanica shopping centre in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
