5-Year-Old Falls Off Ferris Wheel While Riding Alone, Survives By Getting Stuck

A five-year-old was filmed dangling by his neck at the top of a 130-feet Ferris wheel cabin after being allowed to ride without an adult at Yuhuan Park in East China’s Zhejiang province on Monday. The boy was alone in the passenger car as his mother decided to save $4 on the ticket.

The mother reportedly let the boy ride alone after he repeatedly nagged her about it but as the ride got underway, he tried to sit on the metal bars securing the open window of the cabin, following which he slipped and nearly plunged some 40 meters to his death. His neck was trapped between the cabin's metal bars, which prevented him from falling through completely.

The mother and other witnesses watching from the ground started screaming and shouting as the boy’s body appeared to slip out the window between the metal security bars, Yahoo 7 reported.

With no one in the cabin to help him back inside, the operators decided to slowly rotate the cart back to the ground. Once they were able to reach him, staff members and witnesses rushed to the boy and freed him from the bars, Mirror reported.

The boy was taken to a nearby hospital. He suffered no serious injuries besides a bruised neck.

Video footage of the horrifying incident showed the boy desperately kicking his legs and screaming at the highest point of the ride.

Disclaimer: Some viewers may find the video disturbing.

Officials have shut down the ride as investigations continue.

“Children need to be accompanied by adults when riding the Ferris wheel. I don't know how the mother convinced the staff members to let her son ride along in a car,” a witness said.

In a similar incident in 2016, three children fell from a Ferris wheel as it overturned at a Tennessee county fair. Officials blamed "mechanical failure" of the ride for causing the girls — ages 6, 10 and 16 — to drop 30 to 45 feet.

The girls were taken to a local trauma center. While two of them remained alert, the third child suffered a head injury and was placed in intensive care with a breathing tube, NBC News reported.

According to an accident report, "car number 9 got caught on a bar and caused (the) car to turn over." The fair was shut down until a thorough report was filed through a third-party investigation. The investigation claimed "nothing serious" was found with the other rides although there were some "minor cracks" that were remedied.

In another similar incident, an 11-year-old girl died after falling 100 feet from a Ferris wheel during a school trip in New Jersey in 2011. The girl was alone in one of the cabins, which was secured with a double latch, the owners said. Police said the girl was over half-way up the ride when she fell and plunged into the area in front of the ride.