Powerful Wind Flips Trampoline Over Wall, Injures Children Playing on It

Paula Liu
By Paula Liu
June 10, 2019US News
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Powerful Wind Flips Trampoline Over Wall, Injures Children Playing on It
A closeup photo of a trampoline and its springs. (Schanin/Pixabay)

A powerful gust of wind tossed a back yard trampoline in Tempe, Arizona—and the two boys that were playing on it—over a 10-foot-tall brick wall, injuring the children on June 3.

Gavin Reynolds and his friend Rhode Hill, both 11, landed on the street on the other side of the wall, according to Kansas City Star.

“It happened in the blink of an eye, and we just hit the ground,” Reynolds told ABC 7 News.

According to the KPNX video, Reynolds and Hill had noticed the trampoline tilting, but before they could do anything about it, it had already tossed them into the air.

“All of a sudden, the wind comes at us,” Reynolds said in the video.

After landing on the ground, the boy said he was in pain but managed to get up and call his dad for help, according to AZ Family.

“I remember making sure that Rhode was okay, and then just thinking in my head that I have to get up and go get my dad,” Reynolds told KPNX. Reynolds told his father that he was worried his friend had broken his neck in the fall, according to AZFamily.

When the boy’s father, Ryan Reynolds, came out to help, he said he saw the trampoline was bent and the kids’ belongings were on the streets. Reynolds’s father recalled that Hill was very scared.

“I thought that I was going to die,” Rhode said, according to KPNX.

Both boys were transported to the hospital in an ambulance. A CT scan revealed Hill had fractured his pelvis and elbow. Reynolds suffered from back pain and bruises, according to AZ family.

“We land into the street, on the sidewalk, and [Hill] ended up fracturing his pelvis and elbow—I just have a few bruises, I’m fine,” Reynolds said, according to the news outlet.

Reynolds’s father said going forward, he will make sure the trampoline is chained or secured to the ground to prevent this from happening again. The friends said they plan on getting back on the trampoline once they heal, as long as it stays on the ground.

Trampoline Front-Flip Gone Wrong

In another trampoline accident, a 12-year-old boy was left quadriplegic after doing a double front-flip and injuring his spine in New South Wales, Australia.

Louie Mould and his friend were playing on a trampoline last November when he landed awkwardly and compressed his C3, C4, and C5 vertebrae near the base of the neck, reported 9News.

“When I saw him lying there I knew it was not good,” the boy’s father, Peter Mould, told the news station.

The 12-year-old was quickly airlifted to Sydney’s Westmead Hospital and underwent a five-hour operation to fix his spine but the injuries rendered Louie an incomplete quadriplegic—his spinal cord had not been damaged or severed.

During his recovery, Louie struggled to talk, move, and breathe by himself. He could only communicate with his parents by moving his eyes. The boy spent the first two months after the operation in the intensive care unit, breathing through tubes that had to be inserted up his nose via a hole in his throat, reported the news station.

“He’s lucky to be alive,” his father said.

NTD staff writer Janita Kan contributed to this article.

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