Yarnell Sampson: Tyre Sampson's grieving dad DEMANDS to know 'why his son is in a white bag'
The grieving father of the 14-year-old boy who fell to his death from the Free Fall ride at the ICON amusement park in Orlando, Florida on Thursday, March 24, said that he only found out about the tragic news on social media. Tyre Sampson's family called for the ride to be permanently closed after watching the young boy plummet 430-feet to the ground while the ride dropped at 75mph.
Speaking about the harrowing accident, Tyre's father Yarnell Sampson said, "I wish I was there to tell him I love him, that I'm sorry. For him to lose his life. So young, and I wish it was me." Sampson added, "I want to know what happened to my son. I want to know why my son is in a white bag, having to get shipped back home. He walked there. Why he can't walk back? I want answers from everybody. Who all was involved in that?" The horrific video on Twitter shows the 14-year-old boy slipping out of a harness and falling to the ground.
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Recounting the overwhelming despair that he felt after watching horrific footage of Tyre falling to his death, Sampson said he doesn't think he can recover from the loss. Sampson told WESH, "It felt like somebody hit me so hard in my stomach. I just lost, I lost, lost wind. And the pain behind it could never be taken away — and sorry's not gonna take it back and no monies, no nothing in the world to replace the young man. And it's just sad, a young man's bright future was taken away from him over a ride, an amusement park."
Meanwhile, Tyre's cousin Shay Johnson launched a petition on Monday, March 28, calling for the ride to be permanently closed. Johnson said, "My cousin lost his life over this ride. I don't feel it's safe, and feel it should be shut down before someone else's family have to go through what we are going through." The Orange County Sheriff's Office said that the ride is being investigated by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Isaiah Edwards, a TikTok star who visited the memorial and signed the petition, said that he wanted to show his support to Tyre's family. Edwards said, "We have kids ourselves, so this is someone's child when it comes down to it. And any type of sympathetic feeling that you have as a human being you will try to come down here." The community has prepared a balloon release at the park at 6 pm on Monday.
As of this writing, the ride remains indefinitely closed as investigators continue to examine what happened on Thursday night when Sampson dropped out of his seat from the free-fall amusement park ride that is taller than the Statue of Liberty along a busy street in the heart of Orlando's tourist district.
Lawyers representing Tyre's family are trying to understand if there was negligence on behalf of the ride operators or if the teen's size or other factors played a role in the tragedy. Tyre Sampson, who was known as Big Tick to his friends, was 6 feet, 5 inches tall, and weighed well over 300 pounds.
"This young man, he was athletic and he was big. He had no way of knowing,' said Bob Hilliard, a Texas attorney who represents Tyre's mother Nekia Dodd, in an interview on Saturday. "This is going to be an issue of a lack of supervision and lack of training. A straight-up negligence case."