Trapped in lift, woman starves to death

A Chinese woman died of starvation after she was trapped in an elevator for a month because maintenance workers shut off the power supply after failing to check if anyone was inside.

The grisly incident occurred in the western city of Xi’an, renowned as the home of China’s Terra Cotta Warriors on January 30, Beijing Youth Daily reports.

The elevator where a woman was trapped and starved to death after being abdonded by maintenance workers during the Chinese New Year.

Workers found the elevator was stuck between the 10th and 11th floors and shouted to ask if anyone was stuck there before cutting the power before taking their month-long break for Chinese New Year.

Elevator maintenance crew returned to work March 1 and this was when the made the gruesome discovery.

When they opened the cab of a broken lift and found the body of a woman who had been trapped inside.

The woman's mangled hands revealed her desperate attempt to free herself.

The deceased woman was 43 years old and reportedly lived alone in the building and was identified by her last name Wu.

A resident of the apartment complex told Sohu News that the building management ignored residents’ complaints in the past about the building's frequently broken elevators.

The case has been classified as a negligent homicide and at least one “responsible person” has been detained in connection with the investigation, according to news magazine Caixin.

China is prone to safety accidents as regulations and standards are often flouted and enforcement is lax, sometimes due to corruption.

Last July, a woman was killed after she plunged through flooring over an escalator in a Chinese department store.

Security camera footage of the incident posted online showed a panel in the floor giving way as the woman stepped off the escalator.

As she fell half-way through she pushed her son forward, and a nearby shop assistant dragged him to safety.

At the end of last year, passengers witnessed the horrifying moment blood poured out of an elevator on a cruise ship.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.