LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) – A mother in Little Rock, Arkansas, says her kids don’t want to go on any more carnival rides after they got stuck on one.
It happened at the Arkansas State Fair last weekend, and it was all caught on camera.
Fair officials say their rides go through several safety checks because safety is their top priority.
Ally Metzger recorded cellphone video that shows her 11-year-old and 8-year-old children stuck upside down on the X-Drive carnival ride at the Arkansas State Fair on Saturday.
“There’s a bunch of people trying to get the ride to spin, and they would get it almost halfway down, and then it would go right back up to the very top with my kids still upside down, so I’m panicking. My partner’s panicking,” Metzger remembers.
She says that went on for a while with her two kids hanging upside down for at least 15 minutes.
“So, I looked up. My 11-year-old, it looks like she had passed out,” Metzger explained. “I couldn’t see her. Her eyes were closed. She told me when she came home that she only remembered crying and then just got dizzy. Her legs were hurting. I guess because the circulation was out. So, they were upside down for a good 10 minutes, and someone told me to start recording.”
Scooter Korek, vice president of client services for North American Midway Entertainment, explained how the ride crew finally got the kids down.
“The ride computer received a fault. So, what it does is when it finds something that it doesn’t like, it shuts down,” Korek said. “So, the ride was in the air, not in its landing position, for about 10-to-12 minutes on Saturday afternoon. We evacuated everybody according to the manufacturer’s specification that’s in the manual and what we train for all the time.”
North American Midway Entertainment is responsible for all the rides, both big and small, and they take the show on the road to fairgoers all over the U.S.
“Any of my family members can go on any of our rides, any day,” Korek said. “That’s how good I feel about our programs, our safety programs, and the people who work for us to operate and take care of these rides.”
Korek says the fair rides go through five levels of inspection.
“We have a safety director and, of course, the Arkansas State Fair ride inspectors. We have the supervisors. They’re looking at these rides. We do third-party periodic inspections, and the most important of them all is the guys that run these rides. They travel with us wherever we go,” Korek added.
Metzger says she is filing a complaint with the Arkansas State Fair.
“We had a really honest conversation about it and they said, ‘You know, I was really scared. I didn’t know what was happening. I just kind of want to take a break if that’s OK,’” Metzger said. “We had plans this weekend, but that just kind of jolted everything.”
Copyright 2024 KATV via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.