A mother watched helplessly as her two children were trapped upside down on an amusement ride at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock on Saturday.
When Allyson Metzger was watching her children, who are 11 and eight years old, on the X Drive Carnival Ride, something terrible happened, KATV reported on Thursday.
The ride apparently malfunctioned and Metzger pulled out her cellphone to record what happened next.
“There’s a bunch of people trying to get the right 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,” she explained.
The mother posted footage onto her social media page that shows the white and purple-colored ride with several children strapped into the seats.
In the clip, she is heard saying the workers are trying to get her children down after they had been trapped upside down for approximately 15 minutes:
At one point in the clip, the workers push on the ride to make it move.
During an interview with 40/29 News, Metzger said it appeared her 11-year-old daughter had passed out. Once the children were rescued from the ride, the little girl told her mother she only remembered crying during the ordeal.
“And then she got dizzy and her legs were hurting, I guess because of the circulation was out,” Metzger explained,
It took the workers 15 minutes to rescue the children.
Scooter Korek who is VP of client services for North American Midway Entertainment said, “The ride’s computer received a fault” which shut down the ride.
When asked if the rides were safe, Korek explained to KATV that his family members could go on the rides and felt confident about them doing so, adding his group’s fair rides undergo five levels of inspections.
Metzger has since said she is filing a complaint with the fair regarding the incident.
A similar instance happened in September 2023 when several people were trapped upside down on an amusement park ride in Canada for nearly half an hour, Breitbart News reported:
The ride is called the Lumberjack.