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Massachusetts inspectors found that a professor crushed to death by an elevator last month may have met her fate because of a large package she was carrying at the time.
Boston University professor Carrie O'Connor was seen in video carrying a 7-and-a-half-foot-tall box, which appeared to hit a switch that sent the elevator into free-fall while the door was open, according to a report by the Massachusetts Office of PUblic Safety and Inspections.
O'Connor was later found pinned between the elevator and the wall of the shaft.
The "birdcage" style elevator requires the occupant to close the gate manually, which O'Connor did not have a chance to secure before the package hit the gate switch - mistakenly indicating that the door was closed, the New York Post reported.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR CRUSHED TO DEATH IN ELEVATOR ACCIDENT
A maintenance person in the basement pressed the call button while O'Connor was getting into the elevator, which caused the elevator to drop before O'Connor was safely inside and the door secured, Inspector Martin Guiod said in his report on the Sept. 14 incident.
O’Connor briefly halted the elevator’s descent when the box slipped from the switch and braced against the shaft wall, but when she lifted the package again, according to the video, it hit the switch once more.
She then disappeared from view on the footage, indicating “that she had fallen backwards into the hoistway between the 1st floor and basement floor,” the report said.
An autopsy showed that O’Connor died of “traumatic asphyxiation.”
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Her death shocked the building’s inhabitants.
“I heard someone that was bringing in a package out in the hallway, and then I heard an ungodly scream,” resident Leanne Scorzoni told the ABC-TV affiliate at the time.
“Then we ran out into the hallway, and we saw a gentleman who was obviously in distress. He was screaming and hyperventilating, saying, ‘She’s dead! She’s dead!’ "
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