ORLANDO, Fla. — The operators of a free fall ride in Orlando, Florida, said they will begin the process of dismantling a ride next week, almost a year after a St. Louis teen fell from the ride to his death.
According to a statement from a lawyer for Orlando SlingShot, the operators are working with an amusement park company to "coordinate the deconstruction" for the 400-foot-tall Orlando FreeFall ride. The statement said a crane will arrive in the week of March 14 and the deconstruction process will last through the next week.
"We hope to have the ride fully deconstructed before the anniversary of Tyre Sampson’s tragic death, and we will continue to work in that direction and give timeline updates as they are available,” the statement said.
Sampson died on March 24, 2022. He slipped from his seat about halfway down the ride and fell to the ground below.
Last October, when operators said they would be taking the ride down, Sampson's mother Nekia Dodd shared comments through her attorney Michael Haggard.
"With the grief she's endured and continues to endure, there's no such thing as happy but almost a little bit of closure. A little bit of accomplishment that this is gone, it's not going to exist on what killed her baby boy," Haggard says.
Haggard says the number one priority for the family was to get the ride taken down.
Tyre's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against multiple businesses in April, claiming they failed to safely operate the ride, failed to warn Sampson of the proper height and weight safety restrictions and failed to properly train employees. The suit also claims they failed to provide appropriate restraint systems and negligently allowed Sampson to board the ride despite being over the weight limit.
The autopsy showed that Sampson weighed 383 pounds when he died. The weight limit for the ride was 287.
The lawsuit is ongoing.