Photo shows large crack on fair ride
The only photograph COLUMBUS — the State Highway Patrol refused to release as part of its investigation into the deadly Fire Ball ride failure at the Ohio State Fair clearly shows a large crack going across the steel arm of a gondola before it broke apart.
The photo was taken by fairgoer Brian Bury just hours after state inspectors determined the ride was safe and operators began allowing riders on it — and minutes before it broke off. It shows a crack that appears to almost exactly follow the pattern of the sheared-off metal arm after it snapped in mid-ride July 26.
Tyler Jarrell, 18, was thrown to his death and seven others were injured, some critically.
The crack in the photo ran side-to-side across the box steel arm, inches above where it is welded onto the four-seat gondola that carried the riders.
“It’s at the exact fracture point, there is no question about it. It is the prelude to exactly what happened,” said Rex Elliott, an attorney representing Keziah Lewis, 19, a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati who was Jarrell’s girlfriend. She was seated next to him and is still hospitalized in critical condition with injuries she sustained when she was tossed out of the gondola when it broke off.
Despite an Ohio Public Records Act request from The Dispatch, the State Highway Patrol refused Friday to release the photo to the newspaper, citing copyright concerns and the advice of the state attorney general’s office. The Dispatch independently obtained a copy of the photo, and Bury agreed to allow the newspaper to publish it “as a catalyst to prevent future mishaps and tragedies.”
The ride was inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture only hours before part of it violently broke off. The inspectors told investigators they didn’t see anything, according to a Highway Patrol investigation.
“There is evidence of corrosion on other of the arms that didn’t break off, so it is absolutely the logical conclusion that these things just don’t magically appear, they appear over time. It’s crystal clear that people missed this from the time they were inspected to the time it broke off,” Elliott said.
The state Department of Agriculture hadn’t received a copy of the photo, spokesman Mark Bruce said Friday.
“At the time of inspection, there was no visible evidence to keep the ride from passing inspection,” Bruce said in an email. “If there had been, further review would have been completed.”
Ken Martin, an amusement-ride safety consultant based in Virginia, said it’s possible the crack occurred after the ride was inspected that day, but more likely “this didn’t occur overnight.”
“I’m just surprised that so many people missed it, I really am,” Martin said. “We just don’t know when it occurred.”
A spokesman for New Jersey-based Amusements of America said the firm is aware of the photograph but that it doesn’t change anything.
“We don’t question what the picture shows, but it doesn’t change the investigators’ conclusion that it wasn’t operator error,” said David Margulies, with a Dallas public relations firm. “Nobody saw it until they blew up the picture, and you’d have to be standing in the right place to see it.
“Would they have seen it? That’s the question.”
Elliott said the patrol provided him the photo Thursday in response to an Ohio Public Records Act request after a fair-use assessment was conducted.