(WSVN) – A mother who had just given birth died after her head was crushed in an elevator accident at a Spanish hospital on Sunday.
According to Fox News, 26-year-old Rocio Cortes Nunez was being transported between the second and third floors of Our Lady of Valme Hospital in Seville just after she had given birth to her third daughter.
As a hospital worker moved her stretcher into an elevator, the lift malfunctioned, with the doors opening and closing. The hospital attendant then decided to switch to a different elevator and began pulling Nunez’s stretcher out when the lift suddenly shot upward, trapping her head between the two floors, el Correo reported.
Local media reports said it took firefighters two hours to reach and retrieve Nunez’s body.
“I’m a total wreck,” Nunez’s husband Jose Gaspar told ABCdesevilla. “This cannot continue. Today it has been Rocio, but tomorrow it could be another person.”
Nunez’s mother Carmen said she found out her daughter died from a hospital employee who told her about the accident.
“What a cruel death she suffered,” her mother said.
Marina Alvarez, the region’s Health Minister, described the incident as a “rapid, unusual, and tragic accident,” and said there would be an investigation. Alvarez noted the elevator had recently “passed all the controls and complied with the regulations” during its last inspection two weeks ago, according to Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Fox News reported that Nunez had given birth to her daughter, Triana, and was on her way to the maternity ward to visit her newborn.
Nunez also leaves behind her daughters, 5-year-old Carmen and 4-year-old Rocio.
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