New York Personal Injury News & NYC Legal Current Events

New York City Toddler Loses Finger In Macy’s Escalator Accident

A four-year-old boy was maimed at Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square in New York City. Though doctors managed to reattach the toddler’s finger in an emergency surgery, they are not sure how much function the boy’s finger will now have.

The boy, Maxlee, was with his mother, Natalia Gell-Tejada, and his father on the escalator when he bent down to pick up a bottle of water that he had dropped. His finger became trapped in the old wooden escalator. His mother said that the boy was holding his father’s hand at the time of the accident.

While the finger was put on ice and transported with the boy to the hospital, surgeons were not able to fully reattach all of the necessary blood vessels and are not yet sure how successful the reattachment surgery was. The New York City Building Department issued Macy’s a violation and ordered the escalator to be turned off until further notice. Many believe the escalators in the building are old and unsafe – the wooden machines have been in operation since 1927.

There have been two other similar incidents on Macy’s escalators in the last five years – both involving children losing fingers while riding the machines.

Maxlee will remain in the hospital for a few more days under observation, while his mother says she will work to have the out-of-date escalators removed from the store. She has not yet filed a premises liability lawsuit and did not comment on the possibility.

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