Girl injured at trampoline park still living with pain years later | UK News

A mum whose daughter was left permanently injured following an accident at a trampoline park said they will have to live with the fallout ‘for the rest of our lives’.

Emma Kellaway was just 11 when she visited the Flip Out trampoline park in Port Solent, Portsmouth, in 2016, and seven years later is still suffering from the consequences.

Once an avid rugby player, Emma was forced to give up sports and was unable to walk to school with her friends after breaking her leg and detaching her cruciate ligament during an accident at the park.

Her mother Claire has since spoken out about her daughter’s plight as twoformer bosses at a Flip Out centre in Chester may be jailed for breaching health and safety offences following reports that 11 people broke their backs and sustained serious injuries at the trampoline centre- including three in a single day.

Claire, 52, says the incident took place on 24^th August 2016, when Emma visited the Flip Out centre with a friend and his dad as a holiday treat.

Emma, then 11, was playing with her friend on the basketball court trampoline when the incident occurred. 

While bouncing on the court, Emma’s friend tried to pass the ball to her while she was in the air- but she bounced higher than anticipated as the ball ended up hitting her in the leg, knocking her off-balance and causing her to land in a heap, with her leg bent awkwardly underneath her.

She later told her mother she felt something pop in her knee upon landing before experiencing immediate pain.

‘After an hour or so, I got a phone call from the Dad saying my daughter had hurt herself, and could I come as she was asking for me,’ Claire told Metro.co.uk.

‘She was sitting on a chair, looking terrified and sweaty, in a panicky way. She said her knee really hurt and her knee cap had gone funny.

‘There was a person from Flip Out hovering nearby and he said she would be fine- just take her home and perhaps give her a hot bath.

‘I politely disagreed, and said in what capacity did he think that was a good idea? He just shrugged and looked a bit lost. He was around 18-20 years old and wasn’t a first aider, by his own admission.

‘Flip Out were not interested in helping in any way and just left us to it. So I elected at that point to take her to hospital myself as she was clearly in a lot of pain. We went to the local hospital – Queen Alexandra in Portsmouth – and she was assessed almost straight away.’

Upon arrival, at least two members of staff told Claire that the number of child injuries had risen sharply since the trampoline park opened. Whereas there used to be one or two play injuries before Flip Out opened, there were now at least 6 or 7 per week, sometimes more.

An investigation later found 270 similar incidents took place over a seven-week period from December 2016 to February 2017, prompting Cheshire West and Chester Council to conclude the business had a ‘total disregard for safety regulations’.

Following an X-Ray and MRI scan, Emma was found to have broken her tibia, and detached her cruciate ligament from the bone, with a chunk of bone attached to it.

She was forced to stay in hospital for five days and underwent two rounds of surgery, followed by months of physiotherapy.

‘This impacted her start at secondary school, as she was on crutches for most of the first year, which meant she had a revised and reduced timetable as the school wasn’t fully accessible to her at that time,’ said Claire.

‘This was very frustrating for her, as she played rugby, did horse riding and swimming and wasn’t able to participate in any of that for a long time. It also meant that we had to take her to school every day as she could not walk with her friends.’

Emma, now 18, is currently working in the care industry prior to going to university to train as a midwife.

Although she has since dealt with the trauma from her injury, she still suffers from stiffness and pain in her knee joint on a regular basis, which her Mum says there is little they can do to fix without spending big money.

‘This is because the tendon was effectively overstretched by the injury and is now weaker than it should be,’ said Claire.

‘It is ridiculous that a child so young should be so impacted by something that is supposed to be fun, she added. ‘It was the lack of care by Flip Out that infuriated me the most. They said they were trained first aiders, but clearly had no clue what to do with a more serious accident.

We have never been back and warn friends against going there. We dealt with the trauma of it a long time ago, but we will live with the consequences for the rest of our lives.’

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