A B.C. family is calling for government oversight of indoor trampoline parks after a four-year-old girl broke her leg while playing at one such facility.
Maddie Villanueva was injured Saturday, at the Extreme Air Park in New Westminster, B.C.
“She caught a bad bounce and she wasn’t getting up right away, and then she started screaming really loudly,” her father, Jesse Charbonneau, told CTV Vancouver.
Villanueva’s parents claim the facility’s staff did not provide their daughter with first aid, which management denies. Management also provided video which purportedly shows Charbonneau using a technique known as double-bouncing, which is meant to allow one person on a trampoline to help another – his daughter, in this case – bounce higher than would be possible with a solo effort.
“Our main rule is no double-bouncing,” an Extreme Air Park spokesperson said in a statement. “Clearly the dad in white at the centre of the video broke his own daughter’s leg by not following the rules, or using caution around his child.”
Villanueva was released from hospital on Monday. She will need a wheelchair to get around for at least the next few weeks.
Her mother, Sarah Villanueva, said she was not happy with how the trampoline park has handled the injury.
“They’re not doing anything,” she said. “They haven’t apologized. They haven’t tried to be helpful.”
A three-year-old boy fell through the springs of a trampoline at another Extreme Air Park facility in Richmond, B.C. one week earlier while attending a birthday party.
The boy was not seriously hurt. Extreme Air Park said it had surveillance video of the boy “playing with the Velcro that covers the springs” before he fell.
The fall prompted his mother to call for the government to oversee safety at Extreme Air Park and similar businesses. Neither the federal or provincial government lays out specific safety measures for trampoline parks.
The owner of Extreme Air Park has said trampoline parks are safe as long as all rules are followed properly, and has offered to work with the provincial government to develop safety guidelines for the parks. A company spokesperson said three of every 1,000 people who use its parks report being hurt, with most injuries being “nothing greater than a scrape or bruise.”
Earlier this year, a 46-year-old man died when he suffered a serious injury while somersaulting into a foam pit at the Richmond facility.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Shannon Paterson
