A young dad has died after a\u00a0freak cinema accident\u00a0where his head became wedged in an electric chair.<\/p>\n
The incident took place at Vue Cinema at\u00a0Star City\u00a0on Friday 9 March, Ateeq Rafiq, 24, dropped his phone in between the Gold Class seats at the end of the movie.<\/p>\n
When he bent down to retrieve it, the electric seat\u2019s footrest is said to have clamped down on his head.<\/p>\n
Vue Cinema confirmed he had sadly died.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Vue said: “Following an incident which took place on Friday 9 March at our Birmingham cinema, we can confirm that a customer was taken to hospital that evening.<\/p>\n
“We are saddened to learn that he passed away on Friday 16 March.<\/p>\n
“A full investigation into the nature of the incident is ongoing.<\/p>\n
“Our thoughts and condolences are with the family who have our full support and assistance.”<\/p>\n
A family member told The Sun Online that they have been “devastated” by the 24-year-old’s tragic death.<\/p>\n
She said: “It is so sad what has happened.<\/p>\n
“He was with his wife at the time who is just in absolute shock.<\/p>\n
“We are all devastated.”<\/p>\n
Another friend added: “said: \u201cHe was so young and had his whole life ahead of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis family have lost a son, a father, a brother and a husband.<\/p>\n
“He left behind a lovely daughter who is only two years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a lovely, humble, down to earth guy who was always smiling, he literally had everything to live for.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all devastated to have lost him so early and are in shock.<\/p>\n
“We cannot believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Croxford, Head of Environmental Health at Birmingham City Council said: “The City Council\u2019s Environmental Health team were notified of this incident and a Health and Safety investigation has begun.<\/p>\n
“We are unable to comment further at this stage, as the investigation is ongoing.”<\/p>\n
The young victim was said to be stuck as his frantic partner and staff battled to release him in the incident.<\/p>\n
The chair\u2019s foot-rest was eventually broken free and he was released.<\/p>\n
A source had said: \u201cThe Gold Class seats are electric reclining seats. He bent down to look for his phone. At this point the leg-rest was in an upright position.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as he stuck his head underneath to have a look, the footrest clamped down onto his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ambulance had already been called and was at the scene at this time, and took him to hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A young dad has died after a\u00a0freak cinema accident\u00a0where his head became wedged in an electric chair. The incident took place at Vue Cinema at\u00a0Star City\u00a0on Friday 9 March, Ateeq Rafiq, 24, dropped his phone in between the Gold Class seats at the end of the movie. When he bent down to retrieve it, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1225,"featured_media":26058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3,112],"tags":[917,918,920,919],"class_list":["post-26057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-ateeq-rafiq","tag-died","tag-trapped","tag-vue-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}