A four-year-old boy was hospitalised on Saturday after his foot was caught in an escalator at Central MTR Station.
The toddler, visiting Hong Kong from Beijing with his grandparents – who will no doubt never be allowed to look after him on their own again – suffered three bleeding toes but escaped serious injury.
Apple Daily (as translated by EJI) reports that the accident occurred at 11:15am on Saturday morning as the family were about to make their way to the Science Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Instead of learning about kinetic energy via the medium of a giant hamster wheel, however, the poor lad got a first-hand experience of what happens when you jam your body into moving machinery.
The boy was reportedly standing in front of his grandfather, who was carrying a stroller, on a down escalator to the Tsuen Wan platform when his right foot got caught in a gap in the escalator. And before you start writing this off as an unfortunate case of Crocs (which all cases of Crocs are), the toddler was in fact wearing “sports shoes”, reports indicate.
The suitably dressed four-year-old was finally freed by medical staff and an escalator conductor after 20 minutes. Panels from the offending escalator had to be removed.
The MTR Corp insisted that all the system’s escalators undergo maintenance checks once a month, and that the escalator in question was working fine when last inspected on Dec. 28.
The boy was discharged from hospital the same night.
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