Pregnant woman dies after her hair is pulled into factory machine

WARNING – DISTURBING CONTENT: A woman was strangled by her own hair after it became entangled in a factory machine during a job interview.

Umida Nazarova, 21, also suffered a serious head injury and part of her scalp was ripped off as her hair was wrapped around her neck.

She died 20 days later after failing to regain consciousness in Borisov, Belarus.

Umida, a shop assistant who was seven weeks pregnant, was applying for a new job at the Svarmet factory in Borisov, which produces welding wire and electrodes.

Senior staff were showing her the factory when her loose hair suddenly became trapped in the machine, leading to her serious injuries.

“Her throat was injured, according to the doctor,” her mother Olga said.

“Her hair got wrapped around her neck and she was pulled into the mechanism.

If her scalp had not been torn off, she would have been strangled there and then by her own hair.”

Despite eventually being freed from the machine she never regained consciousness.

Court rules negligence in factory death

Her father Dmitry said safety rules were broken.

“They took two lives, she was seven weeks pregnant,” he said.

“They saw she had long hair, so why didn’t they give her something to cover it?”

The Belarus Investigative Committee said: “An employee, who was showing her how the equipment operates, paused to make a record in a register.

“When she turned her head, she saw the woman already lying on the floor unconscious, her hair was tangled in the machine.”

The plant paid for the woman’s funeral.

“She wanted to become a mother,” Olga said.

“We wanted to celebrate her wedding, and collect a grandson or granddaughter from the hospital, not this.

“This is not what I wanted for my child.”

A court has sentenced an unnamed plant head of production for “failure to fulfil her official duties due to dishonest and negligent attitude…causing the death of a person”.