MONTREAL » A Canadian woman was strangled after her scarf and then her hair got caught in the mechanism of a Montreal subway escalator as the moving staircase rolled toward the platform.

Bob Lamle, a spokesman for Montreal’s ambulance service, said Thursday he’s never seen anything like it in his 30-year career.

Lamle says emergency officials found a trapped woman lying on her back at the bottom of the escalator. A doctor declared her dead on the scene. The accident happened at around 9:15 a.m., during the morning rush hour. He says a lot of people saw it and tried to help.

Montreal police spokesman Jean-Pierre Brabant says the 48-year-old woman tried to pull on the scarf to try to get it out and her hair also got stuck.