Girl, 6, gets eyelid torn off after falling on clothes rack hook at Sydney department store

She lost her balance and fell directly onto a clothes rack below.

Ashley Tan | January 19, 2020, 03:30 PM

A young girl recently got into a horrific freak accident while shopping with her grandmother at a department store in Australia.

Lost her balance and fell onto hook

6-year-old Cecilia Chan was with her grandmother at a Kmart store in Chatswood, Sydney on Jan. 8, 2020.

Chan's mother, Jill Huang, told nine.com.au her daughter had apparently wanted to get a t-shirt from the rack above, and had reached out to take it.

However, she lost her balance and fell directly onto a clothes rack below.

The upwards-pointing metal hook of the clothes rack pierced Chan's eye socket and her eyelid was nearly torn off completely.

Bystanders helped Chan's grandmother to call the ambulance, and Chan was rushed to the Sydney Children's Hospital.

She underwent a four-hour operation to repair her eyelid.

While her eyeball itself was not damaged, the muscles, nerves and lacrimal gland of her right eye itself were.

Doctors themselves were reportedly unsure if the girl would suffer permanent muscle or nerve damage to her eye.

According to Huang, Chan's eyelid will be "lower and smaller and [will] never look the same".

Mother campaigning for a safer environment

Since the incident, Huang has called on retail stores like Kmart to raise awareness about the dangers of such hooks on clothes racks, and is also urging the stores to make changes to ensure young customers are protected.

Huang requested that nine.com.au show the full extent of her daugher's injuries as a warning to others.

Huang said when she revisited the same store three days later, nothing had been changed—"the hooks and the display are still there, there were no signs," she said.

A Kmart spokesperson reportedly stated that the company was aware of the incident, and was looking at "various options to reduce the risk of this happening again".

They stated that the safety of customers are of the "highest priority", and that they were in contact with Chan and her family.

Top photo from LBS News Australia