This story was originally published by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
The identity of a 12-year-old boy killed jumping onto a Halloween hayride was released by Hamilton County officials Monday.
The medical examiner’s office reported the victim’s name as Samuel Jessen.
The death occurred shortly before 11 p.m. Friday at the Haunted Hilltop in Harrison, the sheriff’s office said in a statement, after a group of juveniles were hiding in the bushes to jump on the hayride and scare passengers.
“Deputies were told that one of the juveniles had attempted to jump on the trailer and had possibly slipped and fallen underneath the wheels and was found unresponsive,” the statement said, before offering thoughts and sympathy to the family of the deceased.
A GoFundMe page established to raise money for the Jessen family has raised more than $31,000 as of Monday afternoon. The page said Sam Jessen was in a tragic accident, and donations are being sought for help with funeral costs. A contact for the family could not be reached through the page.
The owner of the Haunted Hilltop, Jeff Chambers, could not be reached in a Facebook message and has not responded to a call and text message over the weekend seeking comment.
Soon after the incident, a statement on the Haunted Hilltop’s Facebook page said customers on the hayride didn’t even realize what happened, a statement that has since been removed.
The Haunted Hilltop’s website said management will not tolerate horseplay, loitering, foul language, breaking in line or fighting. The site also said the business includes multiple Halloween-related attractions, including a haunted hayride through the woods and a corn field.
Witnesses tried to help
Two residents who said they were on the hayride when the death occurred disputed the management’s claim that they did not know what happened to the boy.
Caitlyn Birch said she was on the hayride with her four friends when the boy’s death occurred. In a phone call, she said she saw the accident take place and witnessed others on the hayride trying to help.
“As soon as his foot got caught under the wheel, we started screaming at the tractor driver to stop,” the Soddy-Daisy resident said, but the driver kept driving.
The boy who was killed was one of a group who tried to scare the people on the hayride, she said.
“They had jumped out of the bushes, and the particular one boy who got ran over, he tripped and got caught under the wheel,” Birch said, “and ended up getting run over the full left side of his body.”
She said she’s ridden that hayride multiple times, and it didn’t seem dangerous.
Speed didn’t seem to be a factor in her opinion, Birch said. And people, including herself, were yelling at the driver to stop when they first saw Jessen get his foot stuck, she said, but the driver did not respond or stop. She said Jessen tried to grab the sweatshirt of someone sitting next to her after he first got his foot stuck, but he still was dragged under the trailer.
A man sitting across from them called 911 immediately after the incident, Birch said, before he jumped off the trailer to help. The man who tried to help called his wife, who was still on the hayride, a few moments later, Birch said, and his wife told Birch and her friends that the boy had died.
“Everyone was freaking out, and we still had to sit through that ride for 10 minutes” until it ended, she said.
Birch said she’s been trying to contact the Haunted Hilltop staff to tell them the story publicized on their Facebook page was false and some people did witness the accident. She said she’s received no response, but the Facebook page has been edited to remove the claim that patrons didn’t realize what happened.
James Day said he was also on the hayride. In a text message, the Chattanooga resident corroborated Birch’s disagreement with what the attraction said customers saw that night.
“That’s not true,” Day said about their witnessing the fatal incident. “We saw him from the beginning to the end.”
Improving safety
Ron Melancon is a resident of Richmond, Virginia, who has been investigating trailer safety since he witnessed a woman’s death during a parade about 25 years ago. Having worked as an emergency medical technician, he said in a phone call that he could not save that woman and has dedicated himself to improving safety in parades, and more recently hayrides.
He said he heard about Friday’s fatal hayride incident through a keyword alert program for online news and reached out to the Chattanooga Times Free Press by email. He also sent by email multiple news stories about deaths at parades and hayrides across the nation over the past few years.
“I just can’t believe this continues to happen,” he said about hayride and parade injuries and deaths.
According to his research, Melancon said agritourism events like hayrides aren’t well regulated anywhere in the country. He said he wanted to know how employees at hayrides — like the one in Harrison — are trained in first response medical aid or injury prevention.
Melancon said Tennessee Department of Agriculture officials told him the department doesn’t regulate hayrides.
“We regulate everything else, don’t we?” he said in a follow-up text message to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “But nobody wants to address unsafe hayrides.”
Regulation
According to its website, the Tennessee’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development aims to promote workforce development and improve workplace safety and health in Tennessee.
In an email, department spokesperson Chris Cannon said the agency’s amusement device unit does not regulate attractions, including ice skating rinks, mechanical bulls and seasonal haunted houses or hayrides, that are open no more than three months in a year.
In a text message, Kim Doddridge, department of agriculture spokesperson, said her agency does not oversee or have regulations for haunted houses or hayrides. Regulation might happen at the county level, she said.
In the Tennessee State Code, Section 43-39-102, agritourism professionals are not liable for injury, death or damage to property “resulting solely from the inherent risks of agritourism activities” as long as a specific state-mandated warning sign is posted.
There are exceptions, the law says, and liability can be assigned if agritourism professionals commit reckless disregard for safety, don’t inform guests of specific threats, don’t provide proper training for its employees or injure someone intentionally or “commits any other act, error, or omission that constitutes willful or wanton misconduct, gross negligence or criminal conduct.”
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
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