A woman has been crushed to death by a lift in a freak incident as neighbours reported hearing an "ungodly scream".
Carrie O’Connor is believed to have been dragging a parcel inside the lift when it plunged to the first floor on Monday just after 5pm.
The 38-year-old's lifeless body was found inside the lift after it suddenly dropped and she became trapped between floors at an apartment building in Boston, US.
A resident told Boston 25 News she "heard just an ungodly scream" before running into the corridor and finding a man "in distress screaming and hyperventilating and saying 'she's dead, she's dead'."
A spokesman for the apartment said the lift had been inspected this year and did not have any problems.
Fellow tenant Leanne Scorzoni told WCVB Boston: "It was horrifying. It wasn’t a cry. I can’t even describe what it was.”
She described how another tenant saw Carrie just moments before the accident.
She continued: “He was helping her with a box into the building, and he was going up the stairs and he had told her, ‘Hey just be careful,’ because…you have to pull the door across and then step in and then press the button. However if you have something in there, it can trigger a sensor.
“He believes that whatever she was trying to get in there hit the sensor and then it started moving.”
A man who witnessed the tragedy was taken to hospital for trauma, according to reports.
"He saw things that no one should ever see," the source told The Sun.
Carrie had just moved in to the apartment building weeks earlier.
She was pronounced dead at the scene with police saying her cause of death was "traumatic asphyxia," the Daily Star reports.
