14-Year-Old Dies on Orlando FreeFall - What May Have Gone Wrong? + Clearing Up Some Misconceptions
6On the evening of March 24th, 2022, 14-year-old Tyre Sampson fell to his death while riding Orlando Freefall at Icon Park in Orlando, Florida. It was said he was a great football player, great student, and overall a great person. Please keep has family, friends, and community in your thoughts and prayers.
The amusement park industry is overall extremely safe, but things like this do occasionally happen. It's important that when they do, we correctly understand what happened, and make changes to ensure they will not happen again. That being said, there are always a lot of questionable accusations and somewhat unfounded fears that float around after nearly any amusement park indecent and this is no exception. While it's important to hold the responsible parties responsible, placing blames and accusations without an understanding how this stuff works doesn't help us improve safety for the future, or reach closure over what did occur.
A lot of people just don't fully understand how most of this stuff works, and while I am not an expert or professional, I feel I have a better understanding than most people discussing this incident seem to. Therefore, I wanted to take the time today to talk through what I notice as a hardcore enthusiast, and speculate responsibly on the possible causes.
A full investigation is still taking place however, so we will not know every detail of what happened until the report is released. Again, thoughts and prayers to everyone who was involved in Tyre's too-short life and beyond.