An amusement park in the US state of Florida was rocked by a horrific accident yesterday. A 14-year-old boy fell from a so-called ‘freefall tower’ and landed on the ground with a huge crash. The victim died of his injuries some time later.
The 14-year-old American was yesterday as a visitor in the Orlando Free Fall, a rather spectacular attraction in which visitors plunge into a free fall of 131 meters. According to amusement park ICON Park, it is the world’s “tallest free-standing drop tower” in which a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour is reached.
According to local media things went horribly wrong during that free fall yesterday. The boy fell from a great height and died. In a video circulating on social media, the screams of eyewitnesses can be heard. Amusement park employees react shocked and ask each other if the boy had his safety bars on. Whether this was the case remains to be determined by further research. ICON Park has not yet commented on the fatality.
‘Bizarre and shocking’
According to amusement park expert Wessel Wit, the manufacturer of the Orlando Free Fall is also active in Europe. ,,It concerns the manufacturer Funtime from Austria. Funtime has an excellent reputation in the industry. That makes this incident all the more bizarre and shocking. It is not at all clear how this could have gone wrong: all safety systems are designed to prevent these kinds of incidents,” said the owner of Looopings amusement park site against this site.
Nearby amusement parks with a freefall tower from Funtime are Wiener Prater in Austria, Hansa-Park and Eifelpark in Germany, Parc Spirou and Nigloland in France and Kongeparken in Norway, says Wit.
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