Father of 3 gets stuck on amusement park ride ended up dead
He entered the tunnel of an artificial cave and could not get out. He was rushed to hospital but succumbed to his injuries.
Carl O’Keefe, a father of three, became trapped in an artificial cave while trying to take his children to one of the attractions at a theme park. When he was rescued, he was taken to a hospital where he eventually died.
The 49-year-old Briton entered the attraction with the approval of the Kong Adventure Center team in Keswick, north-west England. However, when he tried to return in one of the cave’s narrow tunnels, he got stuck. The center’s team tried to rescue him, but to no avail – they called the emergency services. Miners, firemen, paramedics and police took part in the operation which lasted for more than four hours.
After being removed from the cave, he was taken to Carlisle Hospital, where he was hospitalized for five days. According to the BBC, Carl O’Keefe died from treatment.
In a statement, the amusement park guarantees that “all emergency procedures have been triggered, but it is necessary to seek help”. Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding Carl O’Keefe’s death.
Kong Adventure Center has already been the subject of several complaints on TripAdvisor. One of them was produced in April 2017, when another family had a similar experience at the same attraction. A woman reports how her husband experienced moments of suffering in the cave, which the group allowed. “He went in first, then my daughter came in,” he recalled in a now-recovered assessment by the “Daily Mail” newspaper, quoted here by “IOL”.
“He was immediately trapped, but he tried to move forward and thought there would be an escape route at some point, but there wasn’t. My daughter was devastated to see her stepdad in prison. He was calm for her, but he hated the experience. He backed off and we went back to the living room. I I explained to the lady there that they shouldn’t have been allowed to have fun as she was too big. There was no reaction. We were very angry as we had paid £17 (approx €19) for nothing – not even an apology for the wrong ways.”