Advertising executive Suzanne Hart dragged to her death after getting trapped in elevator doors in Madison Avenue office block

An advertising executive stepping into a lift at her Madison Avenue office building became caught as its doors were closing and was dragged as it shot upward, crushing her to death between floors.

Two people who got on just before looked on in horror as Suzanne Hart was killed. They were rescued from the lift, which jammed between the first and second floors, and taken to a hospital to be evaluated for psychological trauma. Neither appeared to be physically injured, police and fire department officials said.

Public safety and law enforcement officials said Hart was stepping into the lift when her foot became caught in the gap between the lift car and the floor. They say the car then rose abruptly with its doors still open, pulling her along.

The accident happened on Wednesday morning in a 26-storey midtown Manhattan office tower near Grand Central station. The building has been the longtime home of Hart's company, the advertising agency Y&R, formerly known as Young & Rubicam.

Investigators in the city's buildings department have been trying to determine what went wrong. Safety mechanisms are supposed to prevent lifts from moving while their doors are open.

A buildings department spokesman, Tony Sclafani, said the lift had been inspected in June and no safety issues had been found. The last time the lift received a violation for a safety hazard was in 2003, and the condition was corrected, he added.

The lift, one of 13 in the tower, has been taken out of use pending the outcome of the investigation.

Hart, 41, was a director of business development at Y&R and lived in Brooklyn. Her father told the New York Times in a phone interview from his home in Florida that she was "the most marvellous daughter imaginable". "No father could have ever been more proud of her," he added.

A spokeswoman for Y&R, which announced days ago that it planned to move to a new headquarters, confirmed there had been a fatality but said she could not provide additional information. The company is among a number of tenants in the building.

Officials had initially reported, inaccurately, that the lift had fallen two floors.