'Totally Devastated:" NJ Ride That Killed Girl, 10, Shut Down
The owner of an amusement park ride from which a girl fell and died Saturday in southern New Jersey said he and his employees are "totally devastated" as the investigation continues into what went wrong.
"We are totally devastated by this, this has never happened to us in our sixty-year history," Tom O'Connor, one of the owners of Skelly's Amusements, said Monday.
"We all have families, children and grandchildren," he added.
Police responded to the Deerfield Township Harvest Festival in Cumberland County shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday after someone reported that the girl had fallen off a ride.
The girl, who has not been identified, fell from what New Jersey State Police described as "a Wisdom Super Sizzler amusement park ride" called "Extreme." She was airlifted to Cooper Hospital, where she died an hour later.
O'Connor said Skelly's Amusements owned the Extreme for 27 years, and said the company's rides are inspected daily.
"We are fully cooperating with inspectors from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs," Skelly's Amusements said in a company statement Monday. "The ride has been released to us by the investigating authorities and we will begin the process of dismantling it and taking it home."
In New Jersey, amusement ride manufacturers are required to be certified by the Bureau of Construction Project Review before they can sell their rides for the purposes of operation, according to the state Department of Community Affairs.
The owners of the rides, meanwhile, are required to apply for annual permits. "The annual permit assures that the ride is inspected annually and the owner has met all outstanding violations and has proper insurance for the duration of operation under the annual permit," according to the state community affairs department.
The festival went on Sunday, but none of the rides operated. Skelly's said it would not run the rides despite being granted permission to do so.
"Even though we have been given permission to operate the other rides by the state, we don't have it in our heart," the Skelly's Amusements wrote on Facebook over the weekend.
Photo Credit: NBC10
from NBC New York - Top Stories https://ift.tt/2Mdvmm0
No comments: