The older brother of an 18-year-old Sherwood Park man says his brother is scheduled to undergo surgery Tuesday after allegedly breaking his neck at a trampoline park east of Edmonton.
On Monday night, Jordan Smith told Global News the incident happened Saturday evening when his brother Landon went to Jump Park Trampoline in Sherwood Park, Alta. to attend a child’s birthday party with his girlfriend and her family.
“It was actually just his first jump,” Smith said, adding his brother had been to different trampoline parks nearly a dozen times before.
“He actually bottomed out the trampoline… it’s obviously a foam pit, and then the floor of the foam pit’s a trampoline, and then after the trampoline is concrete. So he bottomed out the foam pit.”
Smith wasn’t there but said people who were with his brother told him it was Landon’s girlfriend who found him after and realized something had gone terribly wrong.
“He obviously had gone under and they couldn’t see him in the foam pit, and the girl he was with… she thought he was just kind of joking around so all the little kids were like, ‘Landon, get out of the way, we want to go,'” he said.
“After about five minutes of everybody thinking he was joking… (the girl he was with) jumped in the foam pit, found his leg… and that’s when somebody was like, ‘call 911 right now.’
“He goes into surgery tomorrow but right now, based on the MRI and stuff like that, he’s got a broken neck… and some damage to his spinal cord and some torn ligaments in the actual neck itself,” Smith said, adding doctors were waiting to perform the surgery until Landon’s swelling had gone down.
According to Smith, his brother was able to wiggle his toes on Sunday but was in and out of consciousness while in the ambulance because it’s believed Landon also hit his head on the concrete.
Jump Park Trampoline issued a statement about the incident on its Facebook page Monday.
“We would like to confirm that there was an incident at our facility over this past weekend where an 18-year-old guest was injured in our foam pit,” the statement said in part. “We are in contact with his family and offering any support we can.”
Jump Park Trampoline added its foam pit “is industry standard with 3.5 feet of foam blocks resting above an extra precautionary trampoline above the facility’s floor.” It also said safety was its top priority and that trained professionals had completed a “thorough inspection of all parts of the foam pit and the precautionary trampoline, and have been advised that there are no defects with the equipment.”
The venue also said it would continue to inspect its equipment on a daily basis.
“We are committed to the safety of our guests and will continue to cause our equipment to be inspected on a daily basis as we have since we opened.”