Boy's escalator death declared accident

The death of a boy whose head was trapped between a concrete floor and the handrail of an escalator in Beijing has been confirmed as accidental, the city's device quality watchdogs said on Tuesday.

The victim, who came from East China's Anhui province, stretched his neck out over the handrail while taking an escalator from the fifth to the sixth floor at the Xinyidai department store on Xidan shopping street around noon on Saturday. As the escalator continued rising, his head became lodged between the floor and the handrail, according to an official micro blog of Beijing Xicheng district government.

The boy was on his way to lunch on the seventh floor when the accident occurred on Saturday. The boy's mother, a shopkeeper at the store, was busy with selling goods on the fourth floor, according to the micro blog.

According to Beijing News, rescue personnel arrived at the scene 10 minutes after the accident to discover that the boy was already dead.

Right now details about the exact cause of death are pending release by authorities.

The Beijing bureau of quality and technical supervision immediately opened an investigation and on Tuesday denied that the case could be attributed to escalator quality problems.