A WOMAN was choked to death last week by an automatic door in a villa in Bao'an District, the Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday.

The woman, known only as Yiyi by her friends, died Nov. 14. She was 23. Police investigations show it was an accident.

Yiyi worked as a tutor with the Songgang Teenage Center in Bao'an, teaching local students at their homes.

On Wednesday afternoon, Yiyi was at one of her students' homes. When she was ready to leave at about 5:00 p.m., she found electricity was out and the villa's automatic door did not work. Yiyi pushed the door open and began to walk outside with her bicycle. Suddenly, the electricity came back and the door began to move automatically. Her neck was trapped in the door for about 30 minutes.

When the accident happened, only her student and a housekeeper were in the villa. The report did not say what they had done to rescue her. About 30 minutes later, security guards arrived and took her to a nearby clinic, where she was announced dead.

Doctors said they did not find any obvious injuries on the deceased except on her neck. They said she was choked to death.

The story of her death story began to spread on the Internet Monday, and few of her Internet friends could accept that she had died.

"A woman in her flower season left us," a friend wrote on the BBS of a local portal.

"We can not accept that Yiyi was squeezed to death by an automatic door," Yiyi's aunt told the newspaper. Yiyi's family said they wanted to know whether someone should be held responsible for the accident. They said Yiyi's employer had not talked with them about compensation.

The villa's owner only met the family once after the accident. The owner refused to provide the surveillance camera recording of the accident, saying nothing was recorded because there was no electricity then.

The family said they had not received any official report about the cause of her death.

(Windy Shao)