A Wellington woman injured after she was knocked down by a set of automated doors is dismayed another woman has suffered a broken leg in a similar incident, in a shopping mall also operated by Stride Property.

Mary Sarniak-Thomson​, 82, has been living with an injury caused 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 Stride-operated Chartwell Shopping Centre in Hamilton in November last year.

She said Stride owed a duty of care to its customers, and like McLean, had been disappointed by the company’s response – she says there was no follow up until she contacted them.

READ MORE:
* Elderly woman maimed by automatic doors: who’s at fault?
* Woman, 81, battered and broken after automatic shopping mall doors close on her
* Queensgate and Johnsonville shopping centres take a hit from Covid-19

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’ve had to stop playing the organ at church because I can’t 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 had engaged a lawyer in 2019 to enquire 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 the 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.