North Carolina Woman Dies in Chicago Airport Baggage Carousel

baggage claim
Getty Images/Simon Bond

A North Carolina woman died at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Thursday morning after becoming “entangled” in a luggage carousel, officials said.

Airport surveillance footage captured the woman entering an unoccupied and employees-only area of Terminal 5 around 2:30 am before she was discovered unresponsive at approximately 7:30 am, NBC Chicago reported. 

Officials with the Chicago Fire Department later said the woman had become “entangled” in the baggage carousel’s conveyor belt system and that she was pronounced dead at the scene.

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The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office determined that she died by suicide, with her official cause of death found to be asphyxiation by hanging.

The woman was identified on Friday as 57-year-old Virginia Christine Vinton, from Waxhaw, North Carolina.

Vinton was not an airport employee, a Department of Labor spokesperson confirmed. 

It is unclear how she was able to enter the restricted area in the terminal. 

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