Sorrow, Questions Follow Fatal Fall of Boy, 6, Off Ferris Wheel

The nightmare returns again and again for Sophia Castillo, even when she’s wide awake in the scorching daylight of a Central Valley summer.

Her crew-cut little boy having fun at the county fair. Her little boy jumping alone aboard the Ferris wheel. Her little boy panicking and bolting from the swinging basket 90 feet high. Hanging for dear life, just six years of it lived.

Reuben Castillo clung there from a steel spoke of the ride, nine stories up, for half a minute before plunging to his death Sunday afternoon. His horrified mother and sister watched from the ground.

The tragedy brought out police and state safety inspectors, and sent a tide of sorrow and questions rippling among patrons and carnies staffing booths up and down the midway at San Joaquin Fair.

Why didn’t the ride have locks on the doors? Why didn’t an ambulance arrive sooner? Why was a 6-year-old boy allowed, by both his mother and the operator, to ride alone?

Single mother Sophia Castillo, 24, has her own sad hindsight -- doubts she will carry all her days. But today she must bury her only son.

“It’s just like a roller coaster of emotions I’m on,” she said at the home of her parents, Richard and Rosie Castillo, who helped raise Reuben. “I’m sad. I’m mad. It’s just up and down. I have a lot of regrets, a lot of what-ifs.”

Yellow police tape still encircles the ride, dubbed the Giant Wheel. The popular attraction has been shut down for the remainder of the fair, which ends its 2006 run this weekend. Stockton police and state Department of Industrial Relations investigators have come and gone, with no conclusions expected soon.

On the midway, the sorrowful judgment seems unanimous.

“You feel for the mom, but I don’t think a 6-year-old boy should have been going up on a Ferris wheel by himself,” said Celeste Morino, 35, a high school teacher.

“It’s devastating,” said Crystal Simpson, mother of three. “I guess my only question would be why was he alone?”

Even at 6 years old, Reuben Castillo was an amusement park veteran. With his grandparents or mother, he had ridden the wild rides at Six Flags theme parks, Disneyland and Universal Studios, handling them fearlessly, the family said.

So after a couple of hours at the county fair, Sophia Castillo said she had no concerns about letting her smiling boy head onto the ride with a big group of children. Reuben exceeded the ride’s 3-foot-6-inch height requirement. Sophia remained behind with daughter Ariana, 7.

The ride seemed sturdy. Steel girders support the big yellow-spoke wheel. The hanging gondola-style baskets can hold six adults or eight children.

Castillo said she expected her son to go aboard with other children. But when his turn came, the ride operator put Reuben on alone.

Nothing seemed amiss, she said, until the Giant Wheel stopped to let passengers on, leaving Reuben’s car swaying near the top.

By all accounts, the little boy panicked. He started yelling to his mother below and leaning out of the car. She screamed at him to sit down, then turned her attention to the carnival worker at the ride’s controls.

“I yelled to him that my son was scared, to bring him down,” Sophia Castillo said.

But the ride operator, whose name has been withheld by authorities, spoke little English, authorities said. Castillo does not speak Spanish.

By the time she looked up again, her son was hanging from one of the steel spokes of the Giant Wheel.

Sophia Castillo said Reuben apparently climbed over a seat edge or slipped through the basket’s doors, which can be pulled open by yanking inward.

After 30 or 40 seconds, he lost his grip and fell, hitting the inner spokes of the Giant Wheel and then smacking onto the blacktop, she said.

The boy had a pulse, but an ambulance didn’t arrive for 10 minutes and he could not be revived, Sophia Castillo said.

“I hate for people to say this is my fault,” she said, tears welling. “They need to be in my shoes and understand what I feel, what I saw, what I’m going through. I never thought something like this could happen.”

Stockton police held the ride’s two operators overnight for questioning. The investigation continues, but it is doubtful that anyone will be charged with a crime, said Officer Pete Smith, a department spokesman.

“This is absolutely a tragedy,” he said.

State officials declined to provide details of how the tragedy unfolded.

Dean Fryer, a Department of Industrial Relations spokesman, said that Butler Amusements Inc. of Fairfield, Calif., the company that operates the fair’s rides, and the Giant Wheel itself have good track records.

“If we see some aspect of the ride we feel needs to be improved for public safety, we address that with the manufacturer and owner,” he said.

Carnival rides have been under state oversight since 1968. The last fatality on a portable ride occurred in 1998, when a 4-year-old boy fell from a train ride.

State regulators largely try to ensure the mechanical integrity of the rides, but do not directly address child-safety standards. Some critics say that can pose potential problems for children climbing aboard rides designed to accommodate adults.

Chance Rides Manufacturing Inc. of Wichita, Kan., the firm that built the Giant Wheel, did not return a call for comment.

Mary Caspell, a Butler Amusements spokeswoman, said the family-run business has never before had a fatality on one of its rides.

“We’re all very sad, and it’s a tragic event for everyone concerned,” she said.

The family has plenty of concerns, said Richard Castillo, Reuben’s grandfather.

They believe the doors of the baskets should lock and a mesh cage or windows should cover the top. They wonder why an ambulance wasn’t stationed at the fair, and why an operator with limited English skills manned the controls.

Reuben had completed kindergarten a few weeks ago. At his grandparents’ home, a picture of him in white graduation robe and mortarboard, is flanked by consolatory flowers.

“He just learned to tie his shoes,” his grandfather recalled, head shaking.

“All the life he’s not going to have. That’s what I’m sad about.”