Disaster Teenage boy, 14, dies after plunging from 400ft drop tower ride at Orlando's ICON Park [Video] - Teen was taken to hospital but died from his injuries, Orange County police said.

Archived video of the fall referenced in the article (but not included), fetched from YouTube (likely to be deleted soon). NSFL. Don't watch if you don't want to see someone splatter at the 3:40 timestamp:



A teenager has died after falling from a drop ride at a theme park in Orlando, Florida

The 14-year-old fell from the plunging ride - the world's tallest free-standing drop tower - at ICON park, just after 11pm on Thursday.

The teen, who has not yet been identified, was taken to hospital but succumbed to his injuries, Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

Terrifying footage captured the horrific accident and the screams of witnesses as the boy fell from the ride, which rotates around a tower as it rises in the air before plunging to the ground at 75 miles per hour.

The ride, the Orlando Free Fall, opened in December 2021, stands at 430ft tall and can accommodate up to 30 people.

The vehicle rotates around a central tower as it rises. After it reaches the top, riders tilt forward and face the ground briefly before free-falling at approximately 75 miles per hour.

It was not immediately clear how the teenager became free from the ride's seat belt or how many people were on the tower at the time.

ICON Park on International Drive has not yet commented on the tragedy. Police have opened an investigation into the incident.

A teenager has died after falling from a drop ride at ICON theme park on International Drive in Orlando, Florida just after 11pm on Thursday

The teen, who has not yet been identified, was taken to hospital but succumbed to his injuries, Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

It comes less than two years after a park employee died after falling 200 feet from the Orlando StarFlyer attraction.

The 21-year-old employee was performing a safety check about halfway up the 450-foot-tall ride when he plummeted to his death just before 8am on September 14, the Orange County Sheriff's Office stated.

The worker struck a platform below the ride at ICON Park on International Drive in Orlando and went into cardiac arrest, according to first responders who were called to the scene.

The man was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead from his injuries.

The swing ride opened to the public in 2018. According to the description on the attraction's official site, StarFlyer has no age limit and no weight limit, and the minimum height required to go on the ride is just 44 inches.

The ride is made up of 24 double seats that travel up and down and around the giant tower for 3-4 minutes.

At the time of the fall, the worker was about halfway up the 450-foot-high ride, billed at the world's tallest swing ride

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10651331/Teen-dies-fall-Florida-amusement-park-ride.html
https://archive.ph/nLadc
 
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This is exactly why I don't go on rollercoasters but especially not those fucking tower things anymore. Similar shit happened to me once on a coaster where my harness randomly disconnected midway through the ride and I had to hold it in place. Most people who work at these places probably don't even change their own oil, you think they're actually maintaining the safety equipment?
 
Because this isn't a movie and they aren't actors that need to be all dramatic in front of a camera. IRL only a few hysterical women go crazy when they see an accident. People generally don't panic and start screaming and running unless there's an active threat. Instead they tend to rubberneck for a bit and then walk away or just kinda ignore it and carry on whatever they were doing.

Yes, I've seen it IRL. Hell, I've done it IRL.

Yeah people expect wailing and panic, which probably does happen sometimes, but I also have experience witnessing traumatic death and for me my brain was too preoccupied thinking "what the fuck" to freak out. Shock will also make people do/say strange things.

I noticed in the video after the splat, someone yells out an excited "Woooo!" and I wondered whether that was just a rider who hadn't noticed what happened yet or if it was someone in shock.
 
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911 Call

The caller reported to dispatch that he wasn't secured.

Trying to dl/archive right now, but am also mobilefagging so it's being cockblocky.

RIP big guy. Sucks.

"His arms and legs are broken"

"Was he up off the ground when he fell"

Lady do you think he just tripped and broke all his limbs???
 
That's fucking horrifying, looks like the restraint separated from the bottom and then lifted and he had no idea what was going on till he hit the ground.

I feel sorry for him and his family.

One question I want to ask is what caused this was it lack of maintenance? a lot of these parks just shut down during covid and rides like this are complex machines and normally get regular servicing that would catch things likely to fail before they do fail and if they are in a rush to get the park back into action they might skip some checks and it lead upto this tragic accident.

Edit -
Looking at it this might have failed before the drop, or on the accent - but I'm thinking of basic safety requirements here - safety restraints that work by hydrolics are meant to have a safety contact trigger fire no fire system (there is a name for this for rides but I'm not sure about it but I've got a working knowledge of hydrolics not park systems) and if a safety system fails they are designed to blow off pressure slowly and return to a resting position if that didn't fail that becomes a mechanical failure like a Pin giving way etc, but those things are suposed to have a 10x1 failure loading under any circumstance.
If you look closely while they're waiting for the ride to start the restraint isn't even all the way down in the locking position.

This was just plain old negligence by incompetent minimum wage employees.
 
So does the harness not lock in at all if someone is that large? Because he couldn't have just slipped out through the gap with his head in the hole, plus he falls headfirst, doesn't he? It seems like the harness would have had to completely open up. I don't particularly want to watch it again to analyze.

I nearly died on a shitty carnival ride as a kid but it would have been much less dramatic, just regular falling, gravity, forces. In this incident too the barely paid teenager didn't properly secure us. Not really a ride person after that.
From what I've been able to see- it appears the "shoulder harness" component is only locked on via the hinges. There is no strap or metal interlock between that piece and the seat- a feature I've seen on most every other ride like this. While there is technically redundancy if both hinges lock, that's not redundancy that protects from design flaws since they use the same system. I'm betting this was a barely engaged last ratchet tooth or similar mechanism that should have at least been incapable of locking. A kid that big, that's been tilted forward, and dropped at >60mph exerts more force than even the biggest tech reefing on it on the ground.

I'm placing my bets on primary liability falling on the manufacturer for choosing a novel design lacking standard features, leading to a very predictable fatality. A tech might have been able to catch it, but if the lights are green, do you really want them getting that rough? For want of hundreds of dollars in seatbelts, or thousands in metal latches, someone's dead.
 
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It's called shock lol.
Never seen the video of the guy flipping his car and then poking his head out the driver's window (which was now pointing up) and be all:
"Oi 's all right chap, cheerio then. God save the queen"? (not actual what he said, but close)
Yeah, a cousin of mine called her mom after an accident and said "Hi mom, first off, I'm okay..." It later turned out she had broken her neck and collar bone (but hadn't damaged her spinal cord) in addition to other injuries after rolling her car like five times when a semi decided to move into her lane while she was there.

I said the same thing when I had somebody next to me go into a spin in snow and take me out as well (apparently my cousin's words were in my mom's head when I said that and scared the ever living shit out of her, even though my accident was way way less dramatic).
 

(link/archive)​

Teen was ‘freaking out’ on Orlando ride before falling to his death, father says​

By
Patrick Reilly
March 25, 2022 8:30pm
Updated

Father of teen who died after fall from Icon Park ride speaks out

The 14-year-old boy who fell to his death from an Orlando amusement park ride asked the friend strapped in next to him to tell his parents he loved them in case “I don’t make it down,” according to his devastated father.
Yarnell Samson said his son Tyre felt unsafe as soon as the “Orlando Free-Fall” ride at ICON Park 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.

His son tragically plummeted from the ride when it was about halfway down its 430-foot descent. He died after being rushed to a local hospital.
The heartbroken dad is demanding to know why his 6-foot-5, 340-pound son was even allowed on the ride after he was stopped from getting on others due to his size.

“This one particular ride decided, ‘yeah, we’re gonna take you, come on, get on,’ when nobody else allowed him to get on the rides,” Samson told the Orlando station.
“So I wanna know what happened between now and then that made them say, ‘come on, you can get on this ride,” he added.
Tyre was on the attraction with two of his best friends. The boys had traveled to Orlando from Missouri.

An honor roll student and football player, Samson said his son had hopes of playing in the NFL.
“This should never happen to nobody else’s child ever again,” he said. “And if I have something to do with it, it never will ever again.”
The “Orlando Free Fall” had just opened at the end of December. Standing at 430 feet, it boasts itself as the world’s tallest free-standing drop tower, according to the park’s website. The ride holds 30 passengers as it ascends, rotates around the tower and then tilts to face the ground before free falling at more than 75 miles per hour.

The attraction has over-the shoulder restraint harnesses, with two hand grips at the chest level, that riders pull down and are released automatically at the end of the ride.
An inspector on Friday could be seen sitting in a ride seat with the security harness over his shoulders as another inspector took measurements.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina said the tragedy does not appear to be an intentional act. An investigation is ongoing.

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Yeah, a cousin of mine called her mom after an accident and said "Hi mom, first off, I'm okay..." It later turned out she had broken her neck and collar bone (but hadn't damaged her spinal cord) in addition to other injuries after rolling her car like five times when a semi decided to move into her lane while she was there.

I said the same thing when I had somebody next to me go into a spin in snow and take me out as well (apparently my cousin's words were in my mom's head when I said that and scared the ever living shit out of her, even though my accident was way way less dramatic).
Yeah adrenaline really doesn't care.
Had a minor accident once, just slid out in a curve and bent something in my suspension, first thing I did was that weird phone call lol.

Another reason why it matters to stop by and check the situation if you see something happen. People involved are often ooga booga for the first 10 minutes and forget shit like documenting the accident or exchanging full information etc.
 
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