Parents’ agony after girl, 3, flung 20ft ‘like a cannon’ & killed in trampoline explosion as owner jailed for six months
A FUNFAIR business owner has been jailed for six months after a three-year-old girl was killed when an inflatable trampoline exploded.
Ava-May Littleboy suffered fatal head injuries after she was flung 20ft into the air on Gorleston beach in Norfolk.
Tragically, the youngster had been on a family day out when the horror unfolded in front of her loved ones in July 2018.
Curt Johnson, operations manager at Johnson’s Funfair Ltd, has now been jailed for six months after he admitted two counts of breaching health and safety laws.
The business was also fined £20,000 at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court today.
Ava-May’s parents Nathan Rowe and Chloe Littleboy hugged as the sentence was handed down today, while other family members sobbed.
In a victim impact statement, Nathan said: “I feel inadequate as a parent.
“I took my child on holiday and she was killed. Knowing she’d never walk through the door again into our house was just soul-destroying.”
Her mum Chloe added: “Every day after losing Ava was a blur. How do you start to plan the funeral of your three year old daughter?”
The court heard Johnson had raised concerns the inflatable was not fit for purpose but still continued to use it.
In a bid to drive-down costs, he had purchased the trampoline and other items from a Chinese company.
It had been inspected just four days before Ava-May’s death and was found to be unsafe to use.
Despite this, no record was made and no action was taken to stop it being used as it was not registered with an official testing scheme.
Johnson didn’t even have operating and safety instructions for the budget inflatables.
Horrified witnesses described Ava-May being thrown “higher than a house” when the inflatable burst with a sound “like a cannon”.
A funfair worker had rushed over with his arms outstretched to catch her but couldn’t reach her in time.
The youngster, who appeared to be unconscious before she fell to the ground, was rushed to hospital but couldn’t be saved.
A nine-year-old child was also on the trampoline at the time but was not injured.
Speaking about the horror previously, mum Chloe said: “Although I was screaming I couldn’t actually cry.
“I just stood there shaking and screaming.”
Sentencing today, District judge Christopher Williams said Johnson was “wilfully blind to the risk” and that the inflatable “should not have been in use”.
He added: “I reflect on the suffering and anguish the family have been through.
“Ultimately a child unnecessarily lost their life because of failures on your part to ensure you had appropriate risk assessments in place.”
