A six-year-old boy has been airlifted to hospital after reportedly falling from a rollercoaster at a theme park in North Yorkshire.

A witness said he saw the child fall “face down” from the Twister rollercoaster at Lightwater Valley shortly before midday on Thursday.

Another described hearing loud screams as people shouted at the operator to stop the ride, which was busy with half-term holidaymakers.

Another witness, Mark Charnley, 46, said he saw the boy hanging out of the ride before falling “12 or 15ft” to the ground. “He was hanging outside of the actual carriage … two seconds after that he fell out of the carriage to the floor,” he told Sky News.



“After that, everybody in the queue started shouting at [the] operator of the ride to shut it down because he hadn’t noticed what had gone on. About 12 or 15 seconds after that, he realised what had happened and closed the machine down.”

Charnley said a woman he thought was the boy’s mother was still strapped into the ride as members of the public, including an off-duty police officer, jumped over safety barriers to attend to the child on the ground.



Charnley and his daughter soon left the park as she was too distressed to go on any rides. He said he was “quite surprised” the theme park was kept open.

The boy, who was conscious when emergency services arrived, was rushed to hospital, where his condition is not believed to be life-threatening, police said.

The force said the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had been notified about the incident, the circumstances of which are not yet known. A spokeswoman for Yorkshire air ambulance said: “I can confirm that we attended and transported a child to Leeds General infirmary.”

Posting pictures of an air ambulance and paramedics at the scene, one Twitter user said he saw the boy fall “about 20-30ft” to the ground. The witness said the child fell from the Twister rollercoaster, on which people board a waltzer-shaped carriage for “an epic ascent to the treetops”, according to the theme park’s website.

Lara-Susan James, who was in the queue for the Twister ride, told the BBC: “We could hear a girl screaming, and I mean screaming. I thought she was just scared of being on the ride, but she was hysterical.

“They were part of a bigger party of people visiting the park, and they were on the ground just ahead of us. They started shouting to the operator to stop the ride. It was at that moment I realised something was wrong.

“I saw the operator apply the emergency stop and my husband pointed to the fallen kid on the ground, saying they had fallen out.”

When the ride stopped, a family jumped the barriers and rushed to the child on the ground, James said. “I ushered our kids away as I don’t want them to hear or see any more.”

In a statement, Lightwater Valley confirmed a child was receiving hospital treatment following “an incident on one of our rides”. It added: “The ride remains closed at the current time but the rest of the park is still open. We will issue an update as soon as we have any more information.”

Nearly 18 years ago, a 20-year-old woman died when two carriages collided on the ride, less than a month after it opened at the theme park near Ripon. The French manufacturer of the ride, Reverchon Industries, was fined £120,000 for safety breaches, while Lightwater Valley Attractions and an electrician, Eric Butters, were fined £35,000 and £2,500 respectively in December 2006.

The Twister is one of the park’s “ultimate adventure” attractions, described as being “full of seriously tight turns, giving riders the impression that they might not make it around the next corner, with the threat of plummeting into the treetops”.

In 2015, a ride attendant was spun 40ft into the air on one of the Twister’s waltzer-style carriages when her colleague started the rollercoaster during a routine check.

Sasha Higgins told the Northern Echo she was “completely traumatised” and signed off work for stress after her co-worker activated the ride as a joke while she was checking seatbelts before opening. The theme park said the ride operator responsible was immediately dismissed.

In 2017, the theme park was fined £40,000 after a five-year-old girl suffered serious injuries when her leg became trapped on the Ladybird rollercoaster. Lucy Hibbert was on holiday with her family from Dunedin, New Zealand, when her leg came out of a carriage and was crushed by a platform in June 2012.

Two years later, a deer was killed when it was hit by the Ultimate, Europe’s longest rollercoaster, while visitors were on the ride.