Girl Dies After Fall From Ferris Wheel

Ferris Wheel at Morey's Mariner's Landing Pier 

Phillycom: An 11-year-old Atlantic County girl on a year-end school trip to a Boardwalk amusement park died Friday afternoon after she fell from a Ferris wheel. Abiah Jones, of Pleasantville, was at Morey's Mariner's Landing Pier with classmates from the PleasanTech Academy Charter School when she plummeted from the 156-foot-high Giant Wheel about 12:30 p.m., authorities said.

Harrolt Butron, a park patron, saw the girl land on a metal platform at the bottom of the ride. "Everyone came over," Butron, of Puerto Rico, said in Spanish. "They tried to do CPR," but Abiah remained motionless, he said.

Donnalee Landwher was with her family at the popular amusement pier at Schellenger Avenue and the Boardwalk and saw paramedics working on the girl. "When I saw them doing chest compressions, I knew it was bad," said Landwher, of Monroeville. "I knew they were trying to revive somebody, and it wasn't going to happen."

Students in green shirts, who appeared to be part of a group, were stuck in the wheel's open-air gondolas while medics tended to Abiah, Landwher said. She was transported to Cape Regional Medical Center in Cape May Court House and pronounced dead at 1:14 p.m., Wildwood police said.
Wildwood police and the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office were investigating the accident with members of the state's Department of Community Affairs, which conducts annual inspections of amusement rides.

Like hundreds of other students around the region, Abiah was on a field trip to the park, authorities said. She was alone in one of the Ferris wheel's 40 cars when she fell out, said Wildwood Commissioner of Public Safety Anthony Leonetti. It was unclear Friday evening if the ride had been in motion or how high Abiah was when she fell, he said.

The fall did not appear to be due to mechanical error, police and the amusement park company said.
The Giant Wheel, built in 1985, is one of the tallest Ferris wheels on the East Coast. It last passed inspection March 17, said Hollie A. Gilroy, a spokeswoman with the Department of Community Affairs.

Employees check the rides several times a day, said Tim Samson, a Morey's spokesman. The wheel's cars have a locking gate but no seat belts, he said. "On behalf of the Morey family and staff, I offer our sincerest thoughts and prayers to the family," Will Morey, president and chief executive officer of the Morey Organization, said in a statement.

An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 students swarmed the amusement pier Thursday and Friday during its annual Education Extravaganza, said Lindsey Young, a Morey's spokeswoman. For 17 years, the park has hosted the event for students from grades 3 to 12 to learn about ecology, peer leadership, and physics.

The accident was the first fatality of a patron in the history of the organization, Young added. The trip to Morey's is a much-anticipated school pilgrimage, said Haddon Township Superintendent Mark Raivetz. More than 160 eighth graders from Haddon were at the park Friday. "It is one thing our eighth graders have looked forward to," he said. "You know about this from the time you're in the first grade. It's one of those township traditions."

The district sent an e-mail to the school community Friday afternoon to allay parents' fears that their children had been injured. "When you kiss your kids goodbye in the morning and say, 'You're going to have a wonderful, fun day,' this is the furthest thing from your mind," Raivetz said.

Police interviewed Haddon students who were near the Ferris wheel when the girl fell, Raivetz said.
Nicole Kramer, 12, a sixth grader at Upper Township Middle School in Cape May County, said she and her classmates learned of Abiah's death on the bus ride home. A teacher asked for a moment of silence. "I know three or four girls who saw it happen," Nicole said. "I was going to ride the Ferris wheel at the time it happened, but after, I was too scared. I was sobbing."

According to a 2010 report from the National Safety Council, the estimated number of amusement ride-related injuries on fixed-site rides nationwide was 1,086 or 0.6 per million patron rides. Colleen Mangone, a spokeswoman for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, said the odds of being seriously injured at one of the United States' 400 fixed-site amusement parks are 1 in 9 million.

Morey's Piers, family-owned since 1969, has more than 100 rides on 18 acres at the Shore. Its three amusement piers closed Friday afternoon and were scheduled to reopen Saturday morning.