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Boy, four, suffers facial injuries after trolley travelator accident at Asda Sittingbourne
05:00, 22 March 2023
updated: 13:02, 28 March 2023
A four-year-old boy suffered body and facial injuries after being "pinned" beneath a trolley which came loose on a supermarket travelator.
The child had been standing on the moving walkway with his mum at the Asda store in Sittingbourne when the shopping cart fell on him.
The mother and her son were travelling to the upper floor on Friday afternoon when the customer's trolley in front of them is thought to have de-magnetised.
It rolled backwards onto the customer causing her to fall and land onto the youngster with the fully-loaded trolley, pinning them down.
It comes after a similar incident is reported to have happened only the day before at the shop in Mill Way.
Speaking to KentOnline the mum, who we have decided not to name due to her job, said her son was trapped by the trolley during the "scary" ordeal.
"The people who came to our aid said they heard a popping noise as if the trolley was de-magnetising," she said.
"They ran straight down and started pulling the trolley off my son."
The Sonora Fields' resident reported the incident to staff but claimed the store "did not want to know" and just "brushed it off". They have since offered to meet her to discuss the matter further.
She says they were told it was due to the trolley being heavy with stones in the wheels and customers breaking the magnets by pushing it.
The day before a similar incident is thought to have taken place which saw another customer's trolley disconnect from the moving walkway and start to roll down.
Describing her son's injuries, the Sittingbourne mum added: "He has sustained trauma to his shoulder and on his face.
"It looked like a cheese grater had done it. He has bruising in areas.
"He did not want to leave me the other day when we dropped him off at his grandparents. He was super clingy and he is not usually."
She said the walkway was still in use on Friday evening despite the short time between both incidents.
The 42-year-old added: "There appears to be no safeguarding for public or staff in place.
"They should have closed it off until they knew all the trolleys were safe.
"My concern is the store already knew about a problem with the trolleys. It could have been prevented if the travelator had been turned off.
"There were no signs to say that it was broken. They did not warn anyone that there were issues."
The mum believes the situation would have been avoidable had the store taken "reasonable safeguarding for their staff and customers".
"I do not want anyone else to go through what we went through." she said. "I thought I could have lost him."
An Asda spokesman said: “Whilst there have been no similar incidents reported at this store, as soon as we were made aware of this incident we carried out a thorough inspection and service and found no faults with the travellator.
"We would welcome this customer into our store to discuss this further.”
It comes just weeks after an incident at an Asda store in Gravesend which saw a man in his 80s sent tumbling down an escalator after a group of teenagers pushed a trolley from the top.
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