An escalator company, along with H-E-B, is facing a lawsuit from a family after they said their three-year-old daughter got her hand caught in the escalator, leading to the amputation of four of her fingers

The family of a 3-year-old girl who tragically lost four fingers in an escalator accident at a Bellaire H-E-B store has taken legal action against the supermarket and escalator manufacturer, TK Elevator Corporation, seeking $1 million in damages.

The child became trapped in a wide gap between the escalator steps and the skirt. Despite her parents’ desperate attempts to free her, the escalator’s safety features failed, leading EMTs to amputate four of her fingers on March 30 this year. The girl is left with just a thumb.

The lawsuit accuses both defendants of negligence, gross negligence, and premises liability. According to the lawsuit, safety switches that should have automatically deployed “when her hand got stuck” did not do so.

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On that fateful day, the Williams family visited the H-E-B in Bellaire, a medium-sized city in the Houston metro area. While “riding the escalator down with her parents,” the girl “stumbled and sat on the escalator step to catch her balance.”

“Unbeknownst to her or her family, the escalator had a large gap between the step and the skirt wall which was large enough for a childs hand to get stuck in,” reads the lawsuit filed on Wednesday. “As [the girl] was catching her balance, her fingers on her right hand got stuck between the moving escalator steps and the stationary wall of the escalator and were sucked into the escalator down to the palm of her hand. To her parents horror, [the girl] could not get her hand out of the moving escalator as she continued toward the bottom despite her parents desperate attempts to remove her hand.”

The lawsuit graphically recounts the result of the ordeal. “Horrifically, [the girls] fingers were eventually amputated by the escalator, freeing the remainder of her hand,” the filing reads. “Despite the doctors best efforts, they were unable to reattach [her] fingers, resulting in her being left with only her thumb on her right hand.”

Those switches were allegedly “inoperable” because H-E-B and the elevator manufacturer failed to “maintain, monitor, and keep the escalator in a safe operating condition per its intended design.”

Attorney Ben Crump, representing the family, stated, “This was a completely preventable incident caused by the defendants’ failure to maintain and monitor the escalator.”

The Williams family is demanding over $1 million in damages for their child’s injuries, emotional distress, and ongoing medical needs. They also advocate for industry-wide reforms to prevent similar accidents from happening again.

The lawsuit was reportedly filed several weeks after the incident was reported to the appropriate authorities. The lawsuit explicitly accuses both defendants of premises liability for the allegedly “unreasonably dangerous conditions” of the escalator, negligence for alleged improper monitoring and maintenance of the escalators “in accordance with industry standards,” bystander recovery for the “significant shock” that caused the girls parents “direct emotional impact” by witnessing the grim scene, gross negligence for “conscious indifference to the rights, safety, and welfare” of the Williams family, and spoliation for allegedly failing to report the incident within the statutorily-mandated timeline.