Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images
A 57-year-old woman died at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after she was found trapped inside a baggage carousel conveyor belt, according to multiple reports.
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.
NurPhoto/Getty Images
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' arrival.
Nathaniel 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.
Last year, a 57-year-old woman had her leg amputated after getting it caught in a travelator at Bangkok airport.
In 2013, a five-month-old boy was killed on a baggage carousel at Alicante-Elche airport in Spain after his mother placed his baby carrier on the conveyor belt.
Representatives for Chicago O'Hare International Airport and the Chicago Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Chicago Fire Department could not be reached.
