10/5/2010
Miami – 12-year-old Teagan Marti continues to suffer in her hospital bed a month after she plunged 110 feet from a thrill ride at the Extreme World Amusement Park in Wisconsin.
She could not talk, sit up, nor even wiggle her limbs. She only uses her eyes to communicate, blinking them when the right letter is pointed at by the nurse, so that she may spell a word. She is fed intravenously through her stomach and her doctors have not yet given a prognosis.
Teagan rode the Terminal Velocity ride in July 30, where riders would be attached to a safety harness. They would then step in a metal cage and are lifted up into the air at staggering heights of 140 feet. An operator will be with the rider and he will be the one to release the trapdoor on the cage that would drop the rider in freefall to the ground where a safety net awaits to break the fall. The operator must initially look down and wait for the signal of a ground co-worker to ensure that the safety net has already been deployed. However, the safety measures failed on that fatal day. As Teagan plummeted to the ground, no safety net was properly deployed to catch her. And now, she continues to suffer from the injuries she sustained from the fall.
The 33 year old operator Charles Carnell, said that he just blanked out, and released the trapdoor even before his co-worker could give the go signal.
Teagan’s lawyers have charged Charles Carnell and the park first-degree reckless injury. They are also preparing a lawsuit which would seek accountability from the manufacturing company and designers of the Terminal Velocity ride.
