Posted on 06/22/2007 7:11:48 PM PDT by Hal1950
13-Year-Old Girl Had Feet Chopped Off On Superman Ride; 8 More Rides Shut Down
Six Flags and another company shut down eight more thrill rides Friday around the country, including a ride at a North Carolina amusement park, after a teenage girl had her feet chopped off at the ankle on a Superman Tower of Power.
State inspectors, meanwhile, returned to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, where the accident happened, to examine the ride, which lifts passengers 177 feet straight up, then drops them nearly the same distance at speeds reaching 54 mph.
It was unclear at what point during the ride the 13-year-old was injured Thursday, said Wendy Goldberg, a Six Flags spokeswoman. The girl was taken to a hospital. She was not identified and details of her condition were not immediately available Friday.
Chris Williams, who witnessed the event, told CBS affiliate WLKY that riders saw the cable break as it got to the top on the right-hand side.
Treva Smith said it snapped again as the ride descended. "The people on the ride just came and hit the ground," Smith said.
Next, Williams said he saw the teen maimed. "As the ride came down, the wire swung left, struck the young lady on the back side of my children," Williams said.
Williams' daughter had traded seats with the 13-year-old, and was sitting on the other side of the ride.
Smith told WLKY she raced to the ride to find members of her group who had been on it.
"When I got up there, the lady, she was just sitting there and she didn’t have no legs," Smith said. "She didn’t have no legs at all. She was just calm, probably in shock from everything."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
The exposed look was probably intended to make the ride seem more daring. Nobody figured that one of those honkin cables would actually break and whip about.
I have a friend in Las Vegas whose daughter convinced him to go on the Stratosphere X-Scream ( http://tinyurl.com/yonarl ). I asked him what it was like and he replied “I wanted to die”.
He says he now carries a broken rusted bolt in his pocket and whenever he finds himself in a similar circumstance, he quietly drops it on the ground and then “notices” it loudly and with great fanfare. :-)
It was determined that he got into a car that had been closed, because the locking mechanism was faulty, but the attendant didn't see him get into it before the ride started up. It was sad, he was from a group home for the developmentally disabled, and he and his friends all came to the Fair every year and loved the rides. Amazingly, his family did not sue the Parish, because they knew that it was not the Parish's fault in any way. I don't remember if they sued the carnival owner, but it had been known by the kids that that particular car was defective. Unfortunately, the young man wasn't aware of it.
Good point.
Just take a look at who actually runs the rides - lots of underachiever types, reeferheads, etc.
Her’s an interesting reaction to a distressed child on one of these rides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS-OdWVpHo
OMG!! That is awful!
Why do you say that?
When these things happen you have more witnesses than there were actaul people present. There didn't see anything, but love to talk to reporter.
And, they tend to tell there stories with double negatives. :)
uhhhh....what?
Kennywood Park, near Pittsburgh,
I have been there a few times. A good time for sure.
Years ago my husband and brother got into the Enterprise at Great Adventure, and the locking mechanism on the door was not working. They actually started up the ride and took two whirls around with my family yelling their heads off.
I also know of someone who was on one of those wild roller coasters and ended up with some kind of stroke. That kind of thing doesn’t make the papers.
At Disney a while ago some kind of snapping cable hit a woman in the head and killed her.
nice generalization...do you really believe ( lots of underachiever types, reeferheads, etc.) are in charge of these rides??? you dont think they go thru numerous inspections??....and by the way I just rode this ride 2 week-ends ago at Six Flags Gurnee,Il
no problem. maybe I was lucky the “reeferheads or under-achievers were’nt there huh?
I lol at that one, but I felt like I shouldn’t have. hehehe.
I love the local fairs. But even our little scary rides used to make me scared because they looked like they were held together with big bobby pins.
No, I happened to see the girl interviewed on TV. She said the victim had “no legs” and she was crying. I don’t care if she used a double negative or not (which she didn’t), she was there, I’ll take her word for it.
The folks who actually operate the equipment every day aren’t there because they paid a lot of attention in high school. Not the best & the brightest. In most cases it’s no big deal. I wouldn’t put my life in their hands, if it’s about how diligently they did their job that day, that hour, and that minute.
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