Victim says ‘nothing done’ to improvemall doors safety
A Wellington woman injured when she was knocked down by a set of automated doors at a shopping centre is dismayed another woman has suffered a broken leg in a similar incident.
Mary Sarniak-Thomson, 82, has been living with an injury from when she was knocked to the floor at Lower Hutt’s Queensgate mall in August 2019, when automatic doors closed on her, breaking her arm and fracturing her pelvis.
Sarniak-Thomson was concerned to learn this week 81-year-old Tokoroa woman Wendy McLean suffered a broken leg in a nearly identical incident at the Chartwell Shopping Centre in Hamilton in November last year.
Sarniak-Thomson said the operator in both cases – Stride – owed a duty of care to its customers. Like McLean, she was disappointed by the company’s response. Sarniak-Thomson says there was no follow-up until she contacted Stride.
The incident has had a lasting impact on Sarniak-Thomson who continues to suffer pain in her hip and now needs a walking stick to aid her mobility.
‘‘I have had to stop playing the organ at church because I cannot get up the stairs.
‘‘I find it annoying because I used to enjoy it.’’
With another person being knocked down, it appeared nothing had been done to make the doors safer, she said.
Sarniak-Thomson has learned to live with the discomfort but what rankles her most is the denial of responsibility and the lack of common courtesy to check in on her after she was injured on and by the mall’s property.
She engaged a lawyer in 2019 to inquire about compensation as her family had to transport her from her home in Judgeford to medical and rehabilitation appointments in Lower Hutt over a number of weeks but this was rejected by the mall.
An email sent to her lawyer from Stride’s corporate services manager, Louise Hill, stated Queensgate had no liability in the situation.
Hill stated an investigation after Sarniak-Thomson’s incident had indicated the doors had not been malfunctioning.
She said the mall had gone further to see if anything more could be done to prevent similar incidents but did not say if changes were made.
Like McLean, Sarniak-Thomson was given a $350 voucher.
In a statement, a Stride spokesman said Queensgate took safety seriously.
He said the mall’s doors were regularly maintained and reiterated Hill’s message that the doors had been operating correctly.
Queensgate accepted the accident had been distressing to Sarniak-Thomson, he said, and had previously been in contact to apologise and to wish her well for her recovery.