A woman was crushed to death by an elevator at the building she had just moved in after reportedly overloading it with a heavy package that caused it to start moving.
The tragic accident occurred in Allston, Massachusetts, where 38-year-old Boston University lecturer, Carrie O’Connor, was loading an old elevator at the 1920s building with her stuff.
According to the reports, the two-door elevator in the building located at 1140 Commonwealth Ave typically requires the inner door to be shut before it starts moving. As it is suspected, however, the sensor was likely triggered by fault.
As a witness of the tragic moment revealed, O’Connor was being helped by a neighbor who took the stairs as he brought in more of her stuff.
“I heard it, he saw everything. He was helping her with a box into the building and he was going up the stairs, and he told her ‘hey, just be careful because it’s an old-fashioned elevator,’” Leanne Scorzoni, who is a tenant at the building, said in an interview with the Boston Globe.
Speaking of the elevator, she added: “I don’t know what type of elevator it is, but you have to pull the door across and then step in and then press the button.”
According to the witness, the neighbor who helped O’Connor carry her extra stuff was walking up the stairs and talking to her when the elevator started moving on its own.
“He just said ‘oh, I don’t think that’s gonna fit in there.’ And then she’s like, ‘oh, I’ll try it one more time.’ And then I heard her screaming, and I heard him screaming,” Scorzoni told Boston Globe.
As the tenant added, the neighbor who carried the lecturer’s items up the stairs was screaming and pointing at the elevator that was stuck between the basement and the first floor when she opened her front door to see what was going on.
“When I looked at the elevator, it was not there. Only the ceiling of the car was on my floor, so all the cables were there,” she added.
According to another resident who spoke out to Boston 25 News, “an ungodly scream” was heard at the time of the incident that cost the 38-year-old her life.
“We ran into the hallway and saw a gentlemen who was in distress screaming and hyperventilating and saying ‘she’s dead, she’s dead,’” the witness said.
One of the witnesses of the tragic accident is also Eric Carmichael who was on the first floor together with his wife when the elevator started moving.
“The lady was trying to put her package into the elevator, like that’s how we do it. Take it from the lobby,” he told CBS.
“I guess maybe the package and the woman were over the limit of what the elevator could handle so then what my wife said she saw was the lady’s arms like hanging onto her package.”
As Mr. Carmichael added, the same thing could happen to any resident using the “terrible old elevator that should have been probably kept up better.”
Another tenant at the building, Nevada Foskit, told the outlet that the elevator must have malfunctioned for the disaster to happen.
“It’s a two-slide door system and unless that door is completely shut, it does not move ever. If something did happen, it clearly had to be faulty,” Foskit told CBS.
Following the incident, the Office of Public Safety and Inspections has reportedly confirmed that the elevator in question was recently inspected as per the state regulations.
The investigation is underway. According to the reports, an autopsy will also be carried out in order to determine how exactly the victim died.
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