New report on Icon Park free fall ride adds to pain for mother of St. Louis teen who died

Almost a month ago, 14-year-old Tyre Sampson from St. Louis lost his life falling from an Orlando amusement park ride.

It's been nothing, but a nightmare for his mother Nekia Dodd ever since.

"It's really awful to see a parent go through this," Dodd's attorney Michael Haggard said.

Haggard said Dodd just buried her child last week while also having to digest new information around Sampson's death.

"She's trying to grieve and then hearing these aggravating circumstances of someone intentionally doing this just sends her right back into shock and distraught," Haggard said.

Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried and State Legislature Geraldine Thompson released new findings from Quest Engineering's field report on Icon Park's Free Fall Ride.

"The report confirms that manual adjustments were made to the seat for the seat in question that allowed the harness to restrained opening to be almost double that of the normal restraint opening range," Fried said.

"The adjustments were made to seat one and seat two, therefore if you had a larger person, they were assigned to seat 1 and seat 2," Thompson said.

"These misadjustments allowed the safety lights to illuminate, improperly satisfying the ride's electronic safety mechanisms that allowed the ride to operate even though Mr. Sampson was not properly secured in the seat," Fried said.

They're still working to find out when the adjustments were made and who authorized it.

"The fact more safety measure weren't implemented in the largest free-fall ride in the United States of America is incomprehensible. So, she wants answers to all those and she wants answers and legislation to make sure this can't happen again," Haggard said.

Florida officials are still working to find whether all local laws were followed and if any changes should be made to those laws or regulations.

The ride remains closed.

STORY: https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/loc...