CHICAGO (WGN) — A woman died Thursday after getting trapped in machinery at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
“They had someone try to go up the bag conveyor belt, and they got stuck and entangled themselves,” an official can be heard relaying to the Chicago Fire Department in an audio clip obtained by Nexstar’s WGN.
Authorities with the CFD responded to O’Hare’s Terminal 5 around 7:30 a.m. on a call of an unresponsive female. Surveillance video from earlier that morning showed the woman entering an unoccupied restricted area just before 2:30 a.m., police said.
Fire officials said the victim, identified only as a 57-year-old woman, had become entangled in the conveyor belt system used for moving baggage through Terminal 5.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
“It’s scary. Where’s all the security? Where’s all the cameras?” Cathy Keller, a woman who came to O’Hare on Thursday to pick up a family member, told Nexstar’s WGN after learning of the incident. “How could something like that happen to anybody?”
Officials have not released the identity of the victim, but the CFD said the incident took place in a baggage handling area that is not accesible to the public.
A death investigation is ongoing.