Woman dies as escalator catches her scarf on Montreal Metro

48-year old got hair caught in escalator while trying to dislodge scarf at Fabre Metro station

Montreal Metro has 68 stations on four lines

A 48-year-old woman died this morning after her scarf got caught in the escalator at the Fabre Metro station in Montreal.


The incident happened around 9:15 a.m. ET Thursday at an unsupervised, automatic entrance to the Metro station on the blue line.
Montreal police said a witness reported seeing the woman with her scarf stuck in the escalator.

 Bassam Joubarani, who saw the woman lying on the floor at the bottom of the escalators, says she was breathing but unconscious. (CBC)

"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 Const. Jean-Pierre Brabant of the Montreal police.

 
 Subway scarf catch leads to woman's death

Other subway riders tried to help

Montrealer Bassam Joubarani was making his way towards the exit of the Fabre Metro station when he saw the woman lying unconscious, at the bottom of the escalators.

"Half her body [was] on the floor, and less than half her body was on the stairs," said Joubarani, adding that two people were trying to help her.

“She was laying on her back ... Her face was normal colour and she was breathing.”
Police said the woman was in cardiac arrest when firefighters and paramedics arrived, and she was declared dead at the scene.

"She got strangled … and the woman passed away on scene,” Brabant said.
The coroner has taken over the investigation.

The entrance to the Metro, located in the Montreal borough of Villeray-St-Michel-Parc-Extension, remained closed for several hours as police interviewed witnesses and reviewed surveillance video.

STM says escalators up to code

Montreal’s transit authority refused to comment on the incident, but Société de transport de Montréal spokeswoman Isabelle Tremblay said all the escalators in Montreal’s Metro station are up to code.

The entrance of the Metro at Jean-Talon Street East and Fabre Street was closed for several hours while the coroner and police investigate. (Jay Turnbull/CBC)

​ The STM said it believes Thursday’s fatal incident is the first of its kind.
“We don’t have exact statistics on escalators ... but from memory this would be the first time a fatal accident occurs on an escalator,” Tremblay wrote in an email to Radio-Canada.

In 1989, a girl lost four fingers after her hand got caught when she tried to pick up grapes she had dropped.