Minutes after delivery, woman caught in hospital lift, sliced into two

Rocío Cortés Núñez, 25, who lived in the town of Dos Hermanas near Seville, is said to have been killed as she was transported on a stretcher between the second and third floors of the Valme Hospital in Seville, southern Spain. 

She was being taken to a maternity unit after waking up following a C-section. “We heard a loud blow in the elevator,’ her husband Jose Gaspar said. 

The victim’s husband of four years, who works as a waiter, told Spanish paper ABC: ‘This cannot end like this. This time it has been Rocio but tomorrow it could be another person. I’m a total wreck.’ Her baby was not with her when the tragedy happened. 

She is also a mother to two other daughters, aged three and four, according to Spanish newspaper El Correo. A porter was taking her on a stretcher from the second floor to her third-floor room at Valme Hospital in Seville after she woke up from her Caesarian anaesthetic. 

One local report said the lift began to function unexpectedly before Rocio was fully in and the doors had closed, causing her head to become trapped. 

But regional health minister Marina Alvarez — responding to initial reports that the porter was leaving the lift after he pressed the button to go up but nothing happened — said Rocio was trapped after the lift made an ‘unusual movement’ as the worker went to remove her on a stretcher. 

Firefighters took nearly two hours to free Rocio’s mauled body following the tragedy around 2.30pm on Sunday. Witnesses have described the incident as ‘something out of a horror film.’