Boy Trapped Beneath Ride at Disneyland

A 4 1/2-year-old boy was in critical condition Saturday with injuries to the chest and upper torso suffered at Disneyland after being trapped beneath a car on Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin--the second time a park patron has been injured on the ride this year.

Disneyland officials would not release details of how the accident occurred, although they said the child was injured late Friday night near the beginning of the ride.

“That’s being investigated,” park spokesman Ray Gomez said. “Until the investigation is complete, it would be pure speculation on my part.”

Cal/OSHA Director John Howard, whose agency is investigating the accident, said the youngster was riding with relatives, including his mother, when he slipped free of the restraining bar and was lodged beneath the moving car.

“Our information is that the child’s mom was sitting next to the child,” said Howard, whose agency, responsible for workplace safety, was alerted to the accident by Anaheim park officials at 2:30 a.m. Saturday.

An unidentified park employee told The Times that the child apparently fell out of the passenger side of the ride, possibly while trying to retrieve a fallen toy, then became wedged under the car. Modeled after a cartoon version of a taxicab, the ride has a steering wheel near the left side, with an opening to enter the car on the right.

The employee said young children usually sit behind the wheel, but in this instance the mother took the wheel and the youngster was seated next to the open side.

An Anaheim police officer stationed at the park was notified of the incident at 10:15 p.m. The victim, whom Anaheim police and Disneyland officials would not identify, was revived by paramedics and taken to UCI Medical Center.

Family members at the hospital in the city of Orange declined to give any information about the child except that he was still in critical condition.

Anaheim Fire Department Division Chief Kent Mastain said the boy was near death when rescuers arrived and had lost a substantial amount of blood. He said the boy suffered a lacerated liver, damage to the diaphragm and numerous bruises and contusions.

In the waiting room outside the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit, several friends and relatives of the injured boy gathered together, surrounded by the evidence of a sleepless night. Pillows and blankets were piled high atop one of the couches. A tray of half-eaten food sat on the floor. One young man slept on the shoulder of another. In the background, a television murmured, unacknowledged.

Though friends and relatives for the most part declined to speak, one middle-aged woman said through her tears: “All we want is our child back safely.”

The ride is one of the park’s more popular attractions and is part of its FastPass program, which allows parkgoers to reserve ride times. It carries patrons in spinning simulated taxicabs through a park version of Toontown, based on the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

At the park Saturday, the attraction was closed and employees turned away would-be riders, telling them that an investigation was underway into how the boy had been injured.

In April, a 13-year-old park visitor suffered minor foot injuries on the same ride when she jumped out of a moving car to retrieve a stuffed animal, and became stuck.

On a different ride, nine people were injured July 31 when a wheel apparently malfunctioned on the Space Mountain roller coaster, jerking the cars to a sudden stop. The injuries were minor.

On Friday night, the unidentified boy was riding next to his mother, with his father and grandfather behind, Cal/OSHA spokesman Dean Fryer said.

“We don’t know how the child got out,” he said. “It’s still very early in the investigation.”

Fryer said investigators spent about seven hours at the park Saturday. They were unable to talk with the boy’s distraught parents.

“Our understanding is that there were not any other witnesses,” said Fryer, adding that investigators intend to interview ride operators.

Anaheim Police Lt. Joe Vargas said the ride’s “safety mechanism” was tested. “Everything seemed to be operating normally,” he said.

Anaheim Fire Battalion Chief John W. Kelley said the boy already had been pulled clear of the ride when firefighters arrived about 10:19 p.m.

“Apparently the child was pinned somehow underneath the ride,” Kelley said. “How he got there, I’m not sure.”

Mastain said park workers administered CPR to the boy until Anaheim paramedics arrived and began “advance life-support procedures,” including trying to replace the fluids the boy had lost.

“While en route [to the hospital] his condition improved to the point where he had pulses, spontaneous respiration and steady rhythm on the electrocardiogram machine,” Mastain said. “They went in and did emergency surgery last night. I do not know the extent of other injuries.”

Opened in January 1994, the Roger Rabbit attraction is an updated version of simple indoor rides in the park, such as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Peter Pan’s Flight. But riders can spin their vehicles around, much like the Mad Tea Party ride, by turning a wheel.

Roger Rabbit riders are supposed to be restrained by lap bars. But following the April accident, many people posted information on the Internet maintaining that the restraints were easy to slip out of. Also, the postings warned that a small child riding with an adult could slip out because the lap bar stops when it touches the larger adult, leaving more wiggle room for the child.

“It’s an open secret in the industry” that lap bars can be ineffective, especially on smaller children, said Kathy Fackler, a La Jolla mom-turned-activist who has made herself an authority on ride safety after her son’s foot was crushed in 1998 on Disneyland’s Thunder Mountain.

“Those bars are used as a psychological incentive for adults to remain seated and to give something to hold onto,” Fackler said. “But there’s nothing to stop kids from getting off.”

Amusement park safety has been a recurring political issue as the numbers of deaths and injuries nationwide have increased along with the popularity of such parks.

Nationwide, six people died from injuries sustained at amusement parks in 1999. According to federal estimates, there were 4,500 emergency room visits in 1998 resulting from injuries at amusement parks, up from 2,400 in 1994.

At Disneyland, nine people have died in attraction-related incidents since the park opened in 1955. The most serious incident at the park occurred on Christmas Eve 1998, when a man was killed and two others--his wife and a park employee--injured after a metal cleat pulled free from the ship Columbia as it docked. Subsequent reports conclude that the employee had not been properly trained to operate the ride.

Wylie A. Aitken, a Santa Ana lawyer representing the family in the Columbia accident, said the case has not been resolved.

That incident--and revelations that Disneyland officials had cleaned up the site before local police investigated--helped fuel calls in Sacramento for statewide regulations on the operation of amusement parks.

The state adopted a law last fall requiring annual inspections of rides and establishing safety guidelines and reporting procedures for accidents. Gov. Gray Davis signed the bill into law late last year, but its implementation has been stalled by industry objections to some details, including what types of incidents must be reported and how inspections should be done.

Most Toontown visitors interviewed Saturday said they assumed that any accident would be the result of a rider’s mistake, not the ride itself.

“There’s nothing in Toontown very bodacious,” said Susan Drake of Ventura, who was there with her daughter and three grandchildren.

Dana Delayo of Orange County said her family visits the park regularly through season passes, and would not be deterred from any of the rides because of an accident.

“Accidents can happen anywhere,” Delayo said. “I feel this is a very safe place to take children.”

Meanwhile, Al Tafazoli, Cal/OSHA’s district manager for amusement park rides, said late Saturday that investigators may return to the park today. He said it may be several days before more information is disclosed.

The division’s job “is to protect the public,” Tafazoli said. “And I assure you that we will.”

*

Contributing to this report were staff writers Robin Fields, Jerry Hicks, Brady MacDonald, Monte Morin, E. Scott Reckard and David Reyes, and correspondents Renee Moilanen and Theresa Moreau.

* Editor’s note: An article on C1 about Disney’s soon-to-open California Adventure theme park was printed before the Friday night accident at the main park was reported.