A 57-year-old woman died at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Thursday after becoming entangled in a conveyor belt system in Terminal 5’s baggage area.
The incident occurred around 07:45 when the Chicago Fire Department responded to reports of a woman “pinned in machinery.” The woman, who was not an airport employee, had entered a restricted area at around 02:30, as seen on surveillance footage. Her body was discovered hours later.
Police told ABC News that surveillance footage of Terminal 5, which serves international flights, showed the unnamed woman entered “an unoccupied restricted area at 2:27 a.m.” on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor told the outlet that the woman was not an airport employee.
The exact time she became entangled in the machinery is not known. She wasn’t discovered until five hours later at 7:30 a.m., police told the outlet.
Emergency responders arrived at around 7:45 a.m. and discovered the woman “pinned in machinery,” and “entangled in the conveyer belt system used to move baggage,” the Chicago Fire Department told ABC News.
Larry Langford, a spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department, told The Guardian that the woman was found caught in a conveyor belt system in a baggage room that wasn’t accessible to passengers.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, the outlets said.Police are now investigating what happened in those five hours between the surveillance footage timestamp and the emergency responders’ arrivalNathaniel Blackman, a Chicago Police spokesperson, told the Associated Press that the surveillance cameras were not viewed in real time, adding that investigators only became aware of the footage after the woman was declared dead.
This isn’t the first time someone has been seriously harmed by airport machinery. The Daily Mail reported that a baggage handler at London Heathrow Airport was left with brain damage after her scarf became caught in a conveyer belt in February.
Jasbir Sahota, who has been working at the airport for 30 years, was unloading baggage from a Loganair flight when the accident took place, the outlet said.woman has died after becoming trapped in a conveyor belt in a baggage area at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Larry Langford, a spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department, told local media the woman was “entangled in the conveyor belt system used to move baggage” in one of the airport’s non-public baggage rooms.
Police gave the woman’s age as 57 but did not release her name.
The US Department of Labor told local media that the woman was not an airport employee.
The Chicago Fire Department responded to a call around 07:30 local time (13:30 BST) to an unresponsive female pinned to machinery used to move baggage.
The woman was found in a baggage area in Terminal 5 of the airport, which is used for international flights.Police say the woman was seen on surveillance video walking into the unoccupied, restricted area around 02:30 local time.
The area was not considered a high-security area and would not have been considered a security breach.
Chicago police are conducting a death investigation pending a post-mortem examination on the body.