75-Year-Old Man Dies After Head Gets Trapped in Elevator in Kerala

In a tragic accident that occurred in the Pathanamthitta district of India's Kerala state, a 75-year-old retired government employee named Mathukutty lost his life. Mathukutty, who was retired from the KSRTC (Kerala State Road Transport Corporation), died gruesomely after his head got trapped in a special elevator he had built outside his house. It was learned that the elevator was installed so that the elderly man, who had limited mobility, could easily ascend from the road to his house. The elderly man boarded this elevator after parking his vehicle under his house, and the terrible accident occurred at that moment. This bitter incident has caused serious concerns regarding the safety standards of private elevators in the region.

According to initial findings, the cause of the elderly man's death was a power outage and the resulting sudden stop of the elevator. Following the immediate loss of power, the elevator came to an abrupt halt, and as the man was trying to get out, his head became trapped between the pipes. At the time of the incident, only the elderly man and his wife were at home. Seeing her husband's head trapped and immobilized in the elevator mechanism, his wife panicked and made a strenuous effort to save him. Unfortunately, because the elevator parts were heavy and solidly built, the wife could not dismantle them and was unable to free her husband from that agonizing position.

Unable to intervene on her own, the wife immediately reported the situation to the fire department. Firefighters arriving at the scene shortly after managed to rescue the elderly man through a careful operation by intervening at the point of entrapment. The elderly man, who was injured and unconscious, was transferred to a nearby hospital, but despite all emergency medical interventions, he could not be saved. Hospital officials announced that the elderly man lost his vital functions due to the severe physical trauma he suffered at the scene and the prolonged entrapment. Authorities have launched a comprehensive investigation to fully clarify the details of the accident's mechanism.

It appears that the elevator where the incident occurred is quite different from standard building elevators. The system used featured an open mechanism utilizing square profile pipes sourced from outside, instead of the usual enclosed cabin structures. This simple but extremely risky mechanism posed an unpredictable and massive danger to users during a power outage. It was determined that the primary factor causing the elderly man's death was his head getting violently trapped between these square pipes when the moving system suddenly stopped. Experts point out that such temporary elevators added to homes for disabled or elderly individuals pose serious security vulnerabilities and must be subjected to strict inspections.

This tragic incident has brought the discussion of the accessibility needs of elderly and disabled citizens to the agenda in Kerala and across India. It is emphasized that these types of amateur and locally manufactured elevators, installed to overcome the level difference at building entrances, must be subject to safety regulations. Local governments have started working on new regulations to oversee the manufacturing and installation processes of home elevators to prevent similar tragic accidents from happening again. Furthermore, making automatic brakes and emergency stop mechanisms mandatory against power outages in such systems has been put on the agenda. Society believes that greater sensitivity must be shown in creating safe living spaces following the tragic death of a retired government employee.