A two-year-old boy has had his arm torn off by an escalator at a shopping centre in Yekaterinburg, Russia, after his mother briefly lost sight of him. The boy's right hand and lower forearm were severed by the moving staircase at the Botanica shopping centre, according to eyewitnesses. His mother, a Russian figure skater, had been shopping with her two children when the incident occurred.
A pharmacist who rushed to help said she heard screams and found the child conscious but crying, with his arm trapped up to the elbow in the escalator. A man applied a tourniquet to stem the bleeding while waiting for paramedics. The severed limb was retrieved from the side of the escalator and packed in ice for transport to hospital, but doctors were unable to reattach it due to the extent of the damage.
The boy's father, who was not present at the time, said his wife had been alone with the children. He described how they worked together to pull the severed arm from a compartment at the side of the escalator. The child remains in intensive care, but has been brought out of a medically induced coma. The father said, 'We know he has been brought out of a medically induced coma.'
Russian investigators have opened a criminal case and are questioning witnesses. The incident echoes a similar accident in 2023, when a four-year-old boy lost two toes after his Wellington boot became stuck in an escalator at London Bridge Underground station. His father managed to free his foot, but the machinery had already torn the toes off. Despite being taken to hospital on ice, they could not be reattached.
