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‘I saw her foot being sucked into escalator’
 SHE was going down the escalator with her five-year-old daughter when she suddenly saw the girl’s Crocs shoe being “sucked” into the escalator.
MsJo Lim’s daughter, Jamie, had turned to her left to look at the amusement rides at Downtown East on Aug 7.
That was when her right foot got trapped between the moving escalator steps and the metal side panel.
Horrified, MsLim, 37, a recruiter, leapt into action. She lifted her daughter, who weighs 18kg, and managed to free her foot.
But the damage had already been done.
Jamie’s foot was bloody and had a deep gash that was 2cm to 3cm long.
Fortunately, all her toes were intact.
Recalling the incident, Ms Lim said: “It happened so quickly. Jamie was standing beside me one moment. The next, I saw her shoe being ‘vacuumed’ into the escalator.
“I threw down my stuff and lifted her out. Fortunately, her shoe was not too tight and her foot slipped out.”
After she saw Jamie’s bloodied foot, she was so frantic she did not get her car. Instead, she jumped into a cab and rushed to the nearest paediatrician.
Shesaid: “Jamie was screaming in pain, but nobody helped us.
“People were just standing around gawking. It was really disappointing.”
The paediatrician cleaned upJamie’s woundand advised Ms Lim to take her to a hospital.
At the KK Women’sand Children’s Hospital, the mother found out that her little girl had suffered several hairline fractures on her foot and needed to have her foot put in a cast.
The girl was so affected by the incident she started wetting her bed, Ms Lim said.
“We dealt with the trauma by joking that the escalator ‘ate’ her foot because it was hungry that day,” she added.
Laughing, Jamie said: “I’m not angry with the escalator.”
While the girl has overcome her fear of escalators, she has not been so forgiving of the Crocs shoes.
Although she had worn the shoes, which came in her favourite shade of pink, only once or twice before the incident, she told her mother to throw them away.
The shoes, a birthday present, were bought in June.
MsLim wrote to Crocs about the incident.
The company, she said, reverted that the accidents happened because of inappropriate use of escalators and not because Jamie had been in its footwear.
No more Crocs for her
A customer service officer had offered to replace Jamie’s shoes with a new pair if Ms Lim could provide pictures of the damaged Crocs.
However, Jamie,who has been wearing Crocs footwear since she was two, said: “I don’t like Crocs any more.”
A spokesman for Downtown East told The New Paper:“We regret that such an incident occurred in our premises to one of our visitors.
“We are also working with the manufacturer of the escalator to see how we can prevent such incidents beyond the current safety measures and notices in place.”
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