‘I put victim, 3, on trampoline’
A BEACH funfair worker has told how she put a girl of three on an inflatable trampoline which exploded as she turned to check with her boss whether customers were allowed on it.
Ava-May Littleboy was playing on the attraction when it burst on the beach at Gorleston-on-Sea in Norfolk on July 1, 2018.
Witnesses said she was sent tumbling into the air – higher than the height of a house – before landing face down on the sand.
Ava-May, of Lower Somersham in Suffolk, died in hospital of a head injury.
The witness, referred to as Miss B because of reporting restrictions, was 17 at the time.
She told inquest that she was the funfair worker who put Ava-May on the trampoline.
She said that was playing she while the girl went to check
Sam Russell
with Giselle Johnson, director of Johnsons Funfair Limited, that AvaMay was allowed to be on there.
“I wanted to check as I’m not a mistakey sort of person,” said Miss B. “By the time I had turned around it had… exploded.
She said she had earlier tried to check whether it was allowed and saw someone give a thumbs up, which she “assumed” was Mrs Johnson. The coroner assured Miss B the incident “was not your responsibility”.
The inquest had been earlier told that a funfair worker tried to catch Ava-May as she fell.
Miss B, giving evidence by Skype, said the trampoline’s owner, Curt Johnson, left the site while the trampoline was “partly inflated”.
“I pestered him to leave,” she said. “I told him he could trust us to put it all together.” She said Mr Johnson told another funfair worker, Mr A, who was 15 at the time, to “just make sure you sort out the pump, switch it off and make sure it’s all set out”.
She said she knew nobody was allowed on to the trampoline if the fan was connected to it.
Pressure
Miss B said she went to see Mr and Mrs Johnson at their house in the days after the accident.
She told the hearing: “I went round, I was upset, apologising. They said ‘It’s not your fault’, but you blame yourself.”
Jacqueline Lake, Norfolk’s senior coroner, told Miss B: “What happened on that day was not your responsibility. I want to say that as I gather you have been upset by it. Thanks for your help on the day as
I gather you did try to save AvaMay, so thank you for that.”
Inspection engineer Henry Rundle told the inquest he inspected the trampoline five days before it exploded, and had requested paperwork about it.
He said: “I had never seen a sealed unit trampoline (before). On a device like that you really need to see manufacturer’s information to see what the pressure should be.”
Mr Rundle said he did not recall seeing a pressure gauge or a pressure relief valve, and he had no way of measuring the air pressure.
He said in a statement read to the inquest that Mr Johnson phoned him after the accident “to say that his devices were safe”.
Mr Rundle said: “I thought it was quite unusual given what had just happened. It’s something which they obviously weren’t.”
The inquest continues.