The escalator at JR Mito Station in Mito, where a 72-year-old man died after getting stuck (Picture: Kyodo)
A man died after his suit jacket got caught in the hand rail of an escalator at a train station in Japan.
Mamoru Suzuki, 72, was alert when he was found near its exit at JR Mito Station in the city of Mito, eastern Japan, on Tuesday night.
But he soon lost consciousness and was taken to a local hospital where he was confirmed dead.
The cause of death is yet to be determined.
Police are reviewing the station’s CCTV footage to figure out what happened in the moments leading up to his death.
The 72-year-old was from Hitachi, a town in the Ibaraki Prefecture.
His death isn’t the first fatal encounter with an escalator.
A 12-year-old boy died after falling 50ft from one in India in 2019.
His trousers had got caught in the handrail while playing at the top of it at the Nucleus Mall in Ranchi, in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
Video footage shows shoppers going up and down while he played at the top before he tipped over the side and lost his grip.
Escalators like this one in Tokyo (pictured) are designed to carry people from one floor to the next, but some people lose lives and limbs on them instead (Picture: Mahathir Mohd Yasin/Shutterstock)
The boy had put his hand on the motorised rail in an apparent attempt to stop it.
He was then joined by two other children before he suddenly pitched forward.
His frantic attempts to hold on as the escalator drags him down ended when he lost his grip and fell out of view.
Vishvendu Jaipuriar, a local journalist who witnessed the incident, said: ‘The boy was rubbing his body against the escalator’s conveyor belt.
‘He was playfully trying to stop with all his might. In the process, he got his pants stuck in the belt and was pulled along.’
A four-year-old boy had two of his toes torn off when he got them stuck between a step and the side of an escalator at London Bridge Station in September.
He was returning from a family day out in Sittingbourne, Kent.
In China, a nine-year-old girl saved a boy from a similar fate by running down to press the emergency stop button after he got his foot stuck in an escalator in Wuhan City last June.
A dad-of-two was left in a coma, having died for eight minutes, after tumbling 100ft down a non-moving escalator at Doncaster Interchange in South Yorkshire last October.
At least 14 people were injured when an escalator sent them hurtling to the ground as it unexpectedly reversed direction at a busy South Korean subway station that June.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.