Chinese man almost cut in half as he tried to escape from stuck lift

THIS is the terrifying moment a Chinese man was almost cut in half as he tried to escape a stuck lift.

The elevator was carrying 11 people in an apartment complex in the city of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, when it stopped between floors.
Jie Yuan tried to wriggle out of a small gap, but got stuck halfway — just as the lift started moving.

Passengers frantically tried to push him through as the lift started moving again. Source: australscope

Jie Yuan had been trying to escape through a small hole knocked in a brick wall. Source: australscope

Passengers had pressed the alarm, but when the doors opened to reveal a brick wall, the panicked group decided to take matters into their own hands.
A maintenance worker who had a hammer knocked out a small hole and Jie Yuan started to squeeze through.
His head and shoulders were still sticking out of the lift when it suddenly began moving again.
The frantic passengers managed to push him through just in time, and he narrowly escaped a very nasty death.
Rescue worker Long Wang said: “It was an extremely foolish thing to do, it was relatively easy to reactivate the lift and override the safety function to move into the next floor, and it was only by chance that we checked the CCTV cameras and realised a man stuck in the hole.

The building owner had bricked up the basement entrance to the lift. Source: australscope

A maintenance worker travelling in the lift had knocked a hole in the wall. Source: australscope

“He could have been cut in half, we had told them not to panic by shouting down from above and they completely ignored us.”
Emergency services said the lift had stopped because the 11 men and women packed into it exceeded the weight limitation and the automatic safety function had kicked in.
That should have stopped the lift at the next floor, but the unlucky passengers were taken to the underground car park, where the exit was bricked up to stop unauthorised access to the building.
Cao Feng, manager of the apartment complex, said he had thought it was easier to simply brick up the entrance rather than reprogramming the lift, but had forgotten about the safety function.
It is one of many recent examples of safety failures causing accidents in China’s construction projects, where building work is taking place at a rapid rate, often without adequate checks.

The 11 passengers eventually escaped safely. Source: australscope

A safety trigger had stopped the lift because the passengers weighed too much. Source: australscope