Pictured: The woman killed in horror accident when her scarf became trapped in escalator and strangled her

Naima Rharouity, 47, died after an item of clothing she was wearing became caught in an escalator



The material tightened around her neck, strangling her as she traveled down the escalator at Fabre metro in Montreal



Rharouity was the mother of two young boys

The Quebec coroner's office is investigating the sequence of events that led to Rharouity's death

The Quebec coroner's office is conducting an autopsy on Naima Rharouity, a 47-year-old mother of two who was killed after a piece of clothing she was wearing became caught in an escalator at a Montreal train station.

Tragic accident: Naima Rharouity died Thursday when her clothing strangled her after becoming stuck in an escalator

Rharouity was at Fabre metro Thursday morning when the accident happened. It appears that she was traveling down an escalator when she fell. An item of clothing became stuck in the mechanism and tightened around her neck, strangling her.



Rharouity was the mother of two young boys aged eight and five.

Her family called the death a 'horrific accident.'



According to CTV, her husband had just left for Morocco to make arrangements after his mother died.



The coroner's office is seeking to determine what led to Rharouity's death.

She was wearing a hijab at the time of her death, but it is unclear which item of her clothing became stuck.



'The investigators looked at the different views of the cameras of the STM and they weren't able to determine exactly the sequence of events that led to the death of the woman,' Constable Daniel Lacoursiere told CTV.

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.

‘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.

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

By the time firefighters and EMS workers arrived on the scene, Rharouity 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.

