Dental nurse is 4th visitor to break back at trampoline centre
A DENTAL nurse has become the latest person to sue a trampoline park after breaking her back in a 12ft fall.
Lucy Jones needed rods in her back and was left housebound for four months after leaping from the ‘tower jump’ into a foam pit.
The 19-year-old is now taking legal action against Flip Out Chester trampoline centre, where three others were left with similar injuries after taking the same jump.
Miss Jones said: ‘I landed in a seating position, as we’d been told to do.
‘But when I landed, I felt the worst pain I have ever been through in my whole life.
‘For a while I couldn’t breathe or feel anything.’
Miss Jones said she could not feel her legs, and two staff members came to help.
‘All the while I was screaming in agony but they said I would need to get out of the foam pit, something I knew I couldn’t do on without my of staff own,’ any warning, grabbed she said. me two ‘ by Then, members the arms and dragged me out of the pit on to a mat.
‘My friends were saying, “She can’t move,” and were trying to get them off me but once out of the pit they told me I would need to walk over to the first aid area. I was slumped on the mat in complete agony.’
She claims staff refused to call 999 after dismissing her injuries as ‘just bruising’. A friend had to ring arrived for 90 an minutes ambulance, after which the jump in January last year. Miss Jones, of Northup, North Wales, had fractured a vertebra in her spine and needed a fivehour operation to insert the rods in her back to help the healing process. She was discharged from hospital five days later. ‘That was probably the hardest time for me,’ she said. ‘I was trying to be positive but I was basically housebound for four months. I became depressed and started thinking about how unfair it was what had happened to me.’
On February 1 last year three people broke their backs on the same jump, sparking a safety investigation by the local council. One of those injured, Liza Jones, is also suing Flip Out Chester. The 26-year-old had to have metal plates and screws inserted in her spine after taking the tower jump.
Lucy Jones’s lawyer Mark Howarth, of firm Linder Myers, said: ‘When I was instructed by Lucy I looked into Flip Out Chester and it was clear Lucy’s accident was one of a series of serious accidents which indicates there may be significant issues with the design of the landing areas at Flip Out.’
Flip Out UK, which was launched in 2012 and has 20 centres, said it had since replaced the ‘tower jump’. A spokesman said: ‘Safety is our number one priority and we strive to ensure that everyone who visits can enjoy all of the activities in a safe environment.’
Ambulances were called out 760 times last year to 68 trampoline parks across the UK.