A frightened mother watched on in horror as her young children dangled upside down on a malfunctioning fair ride for 15 minutes.
Ally Metzger recorded the heart stopping moment her eight and 11-year-old kids were left helplessly swinging in the air on the X Drive Carnival Ride the Arkansas State Fair on Saturday afternoon.
While fair employees were seen rushing to manually push the broken ride, Metzger said that it appeared that her 11-year-old daughter ‘had passed out.’
‘I couldn’t see her. Her eyes were closed. She told me when she came home that she only remembered crying, and then, like, just got dizzy. Her legs were hurting. I guess because the circulation was out,’ she told KATV.
Although the staffers eventually got her children and other riders down, Metzger and her children have been left scarred from the nightmarish incident, which ‘jolted’ their plans for the rest of the weekend.
‘There’s a bunch of people trying to get the ride to spin, and they would get it almost halfway down…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,’ the mother said.
After the scary moment took place, Metzger took to Facebook to share her dismay with the state fair, and revealed that a man told her to ‘calm down’ while her children swung in the air.
‘My kids were stuck upside down for at least 15 minutes and 7 workers couldn’t even get them down. How do you build rides and not know how to successfully remove people when it shuts down?’ she wrote.
‘Oh and special shout to the dummy Chris who told us to “calm down it’s only been 4 1/2 minutes.” After what was spent to get in this place? RUN ME MY REFUND.’
Afterwards, she filed a complaint with the fair and said that a ‘nice lady’ checked on her kids at a medical tent. Metzger also said she got a full refund.
‘I remember why I don’t come here,’ she added.
Scooter Korek, an employee with North American Midway Entertainment, the company responsible for the rides at the fair, told KATV that the X Drive Carnival Ride stopped working after ‘the right computer received a fault.’
‘What it does is when it finds something that it doesn’t like, it shuts it down. So, the ride was in the air, not in its landing position, for about 10-12 minutes,’ Korek said.
He said that all riders were evacuated ‘according to the manufacturer’s specification in the manual,’ and that the employees train for that ‘all the time.’
When asked by the outlet if he personally thought the rides were safe, Korek said he trusts that his family members could ‘go on any of our rides any day.’
‘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,’ he said.
Korek added that in order for rides to be considered safe for North American Midway Entertainment, they must pass five inspection levels.
‘We have a safety director and the Arkansas State Fair ride inspectors. We have the supervisors. They’re looking at these rides,’ he assured.
Korek said that the company also has ‘third-party periodic inspections’ take place, adding that the ‘most important’ aspect is the employees who run the rides.
‘They travel with us wherever we go,’ he added.
In July, Salina Higgins, from Tucson, Arizona, revealed how a day with her 10-year-old daughter at SeaWorld San Diego was ruined after the girl’s safety belt came loose on a high-speed roller coaster.
Higgins claimed her daughter started to scream in terror as they hung upside down in mid-air when her loose strap was dangling in front of her eyes.
The terrified mother held on to her for ‘dear life’ until the ride ended.
‘I happened to open my eyes, and my daughter started screaming because her strap was – they call it a comfort strap – was dangling in front of her face as we hung upside down,’ Higgins told WRAL at the time.
‘So I then grabbed the strap, secured it and held onto it for dear life, and we both were screaming until the ride was over.’
Footage of the ride was captured by Higgins’ niece who was watching from the ground.
Higgins said SeaWorld staff were dismissive of her harrowing experience.
When she reported the incident to an attendant, she claims she was met with a minimal apology before more people were quickly loaded onto the ride.