The father of the 14-year-old Missouri boy who died while on an amusement park ride in Orlando, Florida, Thursday said he believes his son knew he was in danger—and he wants to make sure that no other child feels like that again.
“He was panicking when he was going up,” Yarnell Sampson, the father of Tyre Sampson, said. “He told his friend next to him, ‘I don’t know man. If I don’t make it down, please tell my Mom and Daddy I love them.’ For him to say something like that, he must have felt something.”
A witness also said that Tyre had not been secured in his seat prior to the slip.
“They didn’t secure the seatbelt on him,” she said. “He was breathing just after the fall but because he had fallen on his stomach, no one could perform CPR, his arms and legs appeared to be broken,” she said.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Tyre Sampson’s fatal fall from the 430-foot drop tower Thursday. Sampson’s father retained attorney Ben Crump, famous for his civil rights and personal injury claims, who said a fun time at a park “should not have ended in tragedy.”
Sampson said his son was a star football player and honor roll student.
“He was a team player. He was the type of young man that’d take the shirt off his back and give it to you,” Sampson said.
“This should never happen to anyone else’s child ever again,” Sampson said. “If I have anything to do with this, it will not happen ever again.”
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