For the second time this month, a person was trapped in the roller shutter of a Brussels metro station. A homeless woman who got stuck on Tuesday night was taken to hospital as a result.
The Brussels fire brigade was called to the Porte de Namur metro station at around 04:35 on Wednesday morning as a homeless woman's foot had become trapped in a roller shutter.
"Workers in the station took the excellent initiative of moving a scaffold to support the unfortunate woman," Walter Derieuw, spokesperson of the Brussels Fire Brigade, said.
Credit: Brussels fire brigade / Walter Derieuw
The shutter had to be cut out with a disc saw and shears and the injured woman was treated by the medical teams on site. However, due to the seriousness of the injuries sustained to her leg, she was taken to hospital.
Derieuw told The Brussels Times that the circumstances of the incident and why the woman was trying to enter the metro station at this time of night are the subject of an investigation. However, the fact that this person was homeless likely means she was trying to find shelter.
Not the first case
This latest incident is the sixth case of a person becoming trapped in this position in less than a year. Several other people who have tried to enter the metro station at night become trapped in the roller shutters.
The series of people trapped in metro station shutters started at the same spot in March last year. A man was taken to hospital after getting trapped in the shutters of one of the entrances to the Porte de Namur metro station in Brussels.
Two months later, a heavily inebriated man was left hanging from the metro station at Parvis de Saint-Gilles. Just over a week later, the same event occurred at Porte de Hal metro station. The situation turned dire when a man who became trapped in a shutter at Rogier metro station died.
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Almost six months later, a very drunk man got his foot stuck in the shutter of Merode metro station in Etterbeek at the start of February.
In response to these incidents, Brussels Mobility launched a plan at the end of June 2023 to replace the shutters of several stations with ones that cannot be forced open.
