WILDWOOD, N.J. — An 11-year-old girl on a school trip to a Jersey shore amusement park died Friday when she fell 100 feet from a moving Ferris wheel.
Police Capt. Robert Regalbuto said Abiah Jones of Pleasantville was with her classmates when she fell from the ride at 12:30 p.m.
She was driven to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later.
A medical helicopter was initially called for, but paramedics at the scene, seeing how grave the girl’s injuries were, decided not to wait and took her to the hospital by ambulance.
“I’d like to say how sorry we are for the incident that occurred here,” said Will Morey, president and chief executive of the Morey Organization, which has owned amusement parks on the Jersey shore since 1969. It was the first death of a visitor in the history of the organization, he added.
Wildwood police said the cause of the accident remains unknown but it did not appear to be mechanical.
The girl fell from the upper half of the 156-foot-tall Ferris wheel, which was built in 1985 and passed inspection in March. It is among rides at Morey’s Mariner’s Landing Pier.
Morey said it appears Jones was alone in one of the car’s passenger gondolas, which is secured with a double latch.
