Jury awards $310 million to parents of teen killed in fall from Orlando amusement park ride in march 2022
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
There is no way he should have been allowed to ride. He was a big boy, they simply did not have the shoulder harness closed. That person operating the ride really screwed up.
The video of the accident is terrible.
The Orange County jury ordered that the manufacturer Funtime pay $155 million each to Tyre Sampson’s parents, Nekia Dodd and Yarnell Sampson. He died on March 24, 2022, after falling 70 feet from Icon Park’s Orlando Free Fall ride. The trial lasted only a day as Funtime never appeared in court to defend itself.
Zuma Sampson, a football standout who stood 6 foot, 2 inches tall and weighed 380 pounds, was visiting Orlando on spring break from the St. Louis, Missouri, area when he went with friends to the downtown amusement park.
They rode the Orlando Free Fall, which placed 30 riders in seats attached to a tower, secured them with a shoulder harness and then dropped them 430 feet. It didn’t have seat belts, something most drop rides have as an additional safety measure.
His parents argued that Icon and Funtime should have warned their son about the risks of someone his size going on the ride and didn’t provide an appropriate restraint system. Adding seat belts would have cost $660.
The state ordered the ride closed after the accident and it never reopened. It has now been demolished.
[Article ](https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/us/jury-awards-usd310-million-to-parents-of-teen-killed-in-fall-from-orlando-amusement-park-ride/index.html)
I’ve grown to hate amusement parks, they are almost always not maintained properly.
Even if it was designed with the best safety features, anything is bound to fail if not maintained regularly.
He was 100 pounds over the weight limit. He shouldn’t have been on that ride in the first place.
Dunno how “damn interesting” this is. Newsworthy, sure. But feels out of place here.
I legit thought this was a comparison between the two pictures
14 yo, 172kg?
I thought for a second that the park ride in the picture is a homage to her hair
This isn’t really interesting at all, this is just sad. Those parents are going to be let down a second time when they aren’t paid even close to that amount
Feel like the payout is too big compared to other cases where parents lost their children.
the concept of giving relatives of these victims money as an apology is so fucked up to me. like, yea i get that there’s nothing else you can really do but it’s like “yea here u go you can be a millionaire as a distraction so sorry we can’t do much else lol” i hate capitalism bro
I remember seeing the raw footage. The sound of the impact was just… I couldn’t believe what I watched and how someone was able to film the whole thing
The video is not for the feint of heart…
How awful for that family to lose their son in such a senseless way. I hope the get every penny awarded by the jury.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/us/jury-awards-usd310-million-to-parents-of-teen-killed-in-fall-from-orlando-amusement-park-ride/index.html
They didnt show tf up!?!?!
Already tragic to lose your child then to be slapped in the face disrespected like that…wow.
Nice call to the courts.
I’m 90% sure there was a video about this somewhere. Poor family.
why tf is this on /r/damnthatsinteresting? Who finds this content interesting? Get therapy if you do
That amount of $ is completely stupidly exaggeratingly high and not anchored to reality.
I know that these people should get some good compensation for what happened. But $310 million? How does that even make sense?
Man…we were suppose to go there that night
Would it have killed you to leave a news article or something?
I nearly died on one of these at blackpool pleasure beach in England.
As the platform got to about halfway, the cage that held me in fucken disengaged and lifted open, leaving me sat in the seat without anything holding me in at over 100ft high.
I was screaming my head off and im not sure if someone heard me, or it flagged up on the system that my cage had failed, but the ride stopped and slowly came down, where they strapped me up and sent me up again.
It was fucken terrifying to be honest.
Abusement park
The amount of money is obscene. The whole ride itself probably only cost like $10 million.
We need to put some sort of limit on these ridiculous payouts. I am sorry their kid died, but the tort system was not intended to make centimillionaires out of plaintiffs and their lawyers.
All of us end up paying the price of these ridiculous payouts too through higher prices.
Was this caught on camera? And everyone thought it was April fools or something?
is this a cash grab by the lawyers? I’ve noticed this with court settlements recently with insane amounts of cash awarded
All the money in the world won’t bring their kid back….