Two years ago, a man lost his leg in an accident involving the fairground attraction Deca Dance. Fair operator Frank V. from Bergen op Zoom had to answer to the court in Den Bosch on Tuesday, partly because he did not maintain the attraction properly. “The worst nightmare there is”, he describes the accident. The Public Prosecution Service demands a community service of 120 hours and a fine of 15,000 euros, plus 10,000 euros conditionally.
The accident happened on Monday, September 16, 2019. Marco van As visited the fair in Wijchen near Nijmegen with his 8-year-old son. Together they took a ride in the Deca Dance, a fast-spinning attraction. The gondola in which they were sitting came loose and ended up under a floor plate. Van As lost his right leg, his left knee was crushed and his head was injured. His son broke his wrist.
Fair operator Frank V. was not there when it happened, his son was managing the Deca Dance at the time. “My son called me in panic and yelled: The gondola has broken down, Daddy. Please come.” He was there in a few minutes. “A nightmare”, he calls it again.
The Public Prosecution Service investigated the accident and decided to prosecute Frank V. He is accused of having caused grievous bodily harm through negligence. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he also did not maintain the attraction properly and did not report a previous repair in the log.
The accident happened because an arm to which the gondola was attached broke off. It is called a fatigue fracture, which means that the fracture did not occur all at once, but gradually got worse.
Earlier that year, the owner had had the Deca Dance repaired by a welder after discovering a crack in one of the arms. The welder had also welded the other arms, including the one that broke off, as a precaution. But the welder denies the latter in his statement and says that he did not know much about fairground rides.
The welder also had no certificate. WhatsApp messages show that Frank V. knew that. But he couldn’t find anywhere that that was mandatory, he says. “In my eyes he was an expert, otherwise I really wouldn’t have let him repair the attraction. In hindsight, that was a misjudgment.”
Frank V. does not consider himself guilty of the accident. In his eyes he had maintained the attraction well. But that doesn’t mean the accident doesn’t affect him. “We have had a terrible time. I absolutely do not want to take on a victim role, because what happened to those people is of course the worst that exists. But it has also had an impact on us. I don’t see myself as a criminal.” he says.
Frank V. no longer has the attraction, but his son has taken over and renewed it. Frank and his wife no longer had the strength to do so. “I can’t turn it back, if only I could. It did happen at my attraction and I’ll have to live with that.”
The judge asks if he regrets what happened that evening in September. “Sure,” replies the showman. “If I had known what I know now, I would have taken a different welder. But that’s easy in retrospect, at that moment I was firmly convinced that he was skilled and that I was doing the right thing.”
The court will rule on April 5.
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