Parkgoers questioned ride safety before teen’s fatal plunge in Orlando
Safety concerns were raised about the Orlando free-fall amusement park ride just moments before a 14-year-old boy fell from it to his death, a man who filmed the shocking plunge said.
The man, who was only identified as Ivan, said he filmed from below as his friends questioned the safety restraints on the ride at ICON Park, news station WESH reported.
“Why doesn’t this have the little clicky click? The seatbelt,” his friend asked a ride employee in an interaction caught on video, the outlet reported.
Ivan said the friend was referring to the ride’s lack of an additional seatbelt.
“In most rides, you have your harness that pulls down on you. But you also have the additional secondary seatbelt,” he said. “This does not have that. And it’s really concerning especially being a new ride not to have that.”
He said his friends were just two seats away from 14-year-old Tyre Sampson, who died after he fell from the ride as it was about halfway down its 430-foot descent on Thursday.
“This could have been one of my friends that it happened to,” he said. “It’s not what you would expect from a ride in the heart of Orlando. We’re known for our amusement parks, for our thrill rides.”
In the footage, ride employees could be heard asking after Tyre’s fall about his harness.
“Did you check him?” one employee asks her co-workers.
Another employee replies, “The light was on. We did check him.”
The cause of the fatal fall is still under investigation, authorities said.
Tyre’s father said the boy felt unsafe as soon as the ride began going up.
“When the ride took off, that’s when he was feeling uncomfortable. He was like ‘This thing is moving,’ you know what I’m saying. And he was like ‘What’s going on?’” Samson told Fox 35.
“And that’s when he started freaking out,” the dad continued.
The teen then told the friend beside him: “If I don’t make it down, tell … Please tell my mama and daddy I love them.”
“For him to say something like that, he must have felt something,” Samson told the outlet.
