Man dies after being crushed by pop-up urinal

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By Asiya Ali

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A man has tragically died after being crushed to death by a hydraulic urinal in London.

On January 27, a man was working on the underground UriLift toilet near the Palace Theatre - home to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - when the accident occurred at 1:00PM, as reported by the BBC.

Emergency services deployed 25 firefighters, four fire engines, a crane, and an air ambulance in the hopes that they could lift the toilet facility - which has been around for two decades to stop street urination - out of the ground.

After almost two and a half hours, they managed to free the unidentified man, however, he was unfortunately pronounced dead at the scene, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Read the City of Westminster Police tweet below: 

"We're sorry to have to update that, despite the efforts of emergency services, the man who was critically injured in Cambridge Circus was pronounced dead at the scene," they wrote on their social media page.

The victim's family has been informed of the tragedy and Westminster City Council revealed that it was temporarily shutting down one of the urinals on Villiers Street as a "precautionary measure," per the Telegraph.

The publication shared that a spokesman for the council said: "Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the friends and family of the worker who tragically died at this site in the West End."

"We have been on site supporting our contractor and the emergency services and will assist all investigations in any way we can," they added.

In addition to this, the London Fire Brigade confirmed that the man had been "trapped below street level underneath a hydraulic urinal" - which is a pop-up urinal that comes out of the ground at night and is kept underground during the day, as noted by BBC.

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The pop-up hydraulic UriLift urinal in Paddington, London. Credit: P Tomlins / Alamy

"We were called today at 1:05PM to reports of an incident on Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross," a London Ambulance Service spokesman said of the shocking incident, per the outlet.

"We sent a number of resources to the scene, including an ambulance crew, members of our hazardous area response team, members of our tactical response unit, and a medic in a fast response car," the service continued.

"We also dispatched London’s Air Ambulance. Sadly, despite the best efforts of our crews, a man was pronounced dead at the scene," they concluded.

The Palace Theatre, which has been staging a story by JK Rowling, confirmed that their Friday performance still went ahead.

Our thoughts go out to the man's family and friends.

Featured image credit: Graham Bridgeman-Clarke / Alamy