On May 15, a 24-year-old nurse surnamed Wang was cut in half by an elevator after she found herself pinched between its closing doors.

That sentence is horrific enough, but what about more details?

The victim, a nurse surnamed Wang, was trapped in the elevator in Changhong Tower in Shenzhen’s Luohu district, when it stopped due to failure. Since the door was open the woman attempted to exit, but the elevator started moving again. The elevator fell at least three stories, killing Wang.

Those details are definitely sufficiently horrific, but what about the video?

Watch above. The newscaster says the woman was playing with her cell phone when she got caught between the doors. There were 14 others in the elevator.

The more graphic parts are censored, but you see enough to be able to imagine being inside the elevator when it happens. The gore, the…

Never mind.

Between May 14 and 16, four people died in separate elevator/escaltor accidents in China. Just the day before this Shenzhen incident, an elderly woman was crushed to death when an escalator abruptly broke in a Wal-Mart in Hubei province.

The journalist in the above newscast discovered that the company in charge of the Shenzhen building’s maintenance, Weida Elevator Shenzhen Ltd, had completed an inspection just a few days before, on May 12. One of the building managers went on camera to say that the inspection did not turn up any problems.

So what happened?

Further inquiry at Weida was met with “no comment.”

“The brands of the elevator involved in the two accidents were not mentioned in Chinese media report,” Sina noted in an article last week.

Full newscast:



