A 14-year-old boy has died after Florida authorities say he fell from an Orlando theme park, WESH 2 News reported.
While riding the Orlando Free-Fall ride at ICON Park around 11 p.m. Thursday, the teen fell to his death, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.
The teenager was rushed to the hospital but died of his injuries, police said. The identity of the teen has not been released.
The drop tower attraction, according to the ICON Park website, stands 430 feet (130 meters) tall, making it “the tallest free fall tower in the world.” The attraction has room for 30 passengers when going full capacity.
Witnesses who saw the boy fall from the ride told Fox News 35 that everyone who witnessed the incident, including the teen’s parents, panicked.
“At first we thought it was part of the ride or something until we got a little closer and it was a person lying on the ground,” Montrey Williams told the news station. “Everyone was panicking and screaming.”
According to the director of marketing for the attraction, which is owned and operated by the Slingshot Group of Companies, Orlando Free-Fall is operated with “all safety precautions in mind.”
“Everything is in order and that is why we are doing this investigation,” John Stine, the director, told Fox News 35.
Local police launched an investigation into the incident.
The ride, which opened in December along with the Orlando Slingshot, are popular attractions at the Florida theme park. The premise is that a vehicle circles a central tower as it climbs up the 430-foot drop. Once at the top, people briefly lean forward and look down at the ground before going down at 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour.
This is not the first time a fatal accident has occurred at ICON Park in recent years.
A 21-year-old park employee died after falling 200 feet (60 meters) from the Orlando StarFlyer attraction while performing a security check. The employee was about halfway up the 450-foot (137-meter) tall structure before he fell to his death and struck a platform below the ride. Emergency services said the man had gone into cardiac arrest when they arrived at the scene shortly after 8am on September 14, 2020.