Tragedy: Woman strangled to death in a freak subway accident after her scarf and hair got caught in escalator

Tragedy: Workers remove the body of a 48-year-old woman after her scarf and hair got caught in an escalator

A 48-year-old Canadian woman has died from strangulation after her scarf and hair got caught in an escalator at a Montreal train station. 

The freak accident took place just after 9am Thursday morning at the Fabre metro station along Montreal's blue line. 

Witnesses told police they saw the unnamed victim struggling to free her scarf after it got lodged in the teeth of an escalator on her way down to the subway platform.

‘While she was trying to pull up her scarf from the escalator, her hair got caught too and from there, everything got tied up at the end of the escalators,’ said Constable Jean-Pierre Brabant, of the Montreal police.

Commuter Bassam Joubarani told CBC.ca he saw two Good Samaritans rushing to the aid of the 48-year-old woman, who was lying unconscious on her back at the bottom of the moving stairs. 

Joubarani recalled seeing the trapped victim still breathing, with half of her body resting on the escalator.  

By the time firefighters and EMS workers arrived on the scene, the unnamed woman went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at the scene.