Owner of inflatable beach trampoline that exploded and killed three-year-old girl is jailed

Ava-May Littleboy was thrown into the air at the ‘height of a house’ when the equipment failed on Gorleston beach in Norfolk

Three-year-old Ava-May Littleboy died of a head injury after being thrown from an inflatable trampoline on a beach (PA Media)

The owner of an inflatable trampoline which exploded, killing a three-year-old girl, has been jailed for six months.

Ava-May Littleboy was thrown into the air when the equipment failed on Gorleston beach in Norfolk, with a witness saying she went the “height of a house”, Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court heard.

Ava-May, from Somersham in Suffolk, had been taken by family and friends to the Bounce About attraction that had been set up on the beach at Gorleston-on-Sea in Norfolk, on July 1, 2018.

She and a nine-year-old girl were on the trampoline when the blast happened without warning.

While the older child suffered minor injuries, Ava-May was thrown upwards – witnesses described her as being shot up between 20 and 40 feet, or the height of a house.

Ava-May was thrown upwards 40 feet when the inflatable trampoline exploded (HSE)

She landed on the beach and in the process, she sustained fatal head injuries.

District judge Christopher Williams, sentencing on Friday, said inflatable owner Curt Johnson, 52, was “wilfully blind to the risk” and that the inflatable “should not have been in use”.

Ava-May’s father, Nathan Rowe, said outside court that it was the “right decision” and a “massive weight lifted from our shoulders” when Johnson was jailed.

“Justice is being done,” he said.

Johnsons Funfair Limited, trading as Bounce About, operated a number of bouncy castles, slides and other inflatables on the beach at Gorleston, and at another site on Great Yarmouth beach.

Pascal Bates for Great Yarmouth Borough Council brought the prosecution together with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The investigation found that Curt Johnson, on behalf of the company, had imported the inflatable trampoline into the UK from China in 2017 and had put it into use without carrying out any of the required testing and certification to ensure it was safe to be used by the public.

Johnsons Funfair Limited, trading as Bounce About, operated a number of bouncy castles, slides and other inflatables on the beach at Gorleston (HSE)

An importer of such an item equipment must ensure that there has been a proper review of the design, verification that the item has been manufactured in accordance with the design, and a detailed test by a suitable expert on the item’s arrival in the UK. None of that had been done here.

In operational terms, there had been no proper risk assessment or work procedure laid down, and the company used undertrained staff paid cash in hand, some of them too young to work without child work permits which were not sought and would not have been granted for work at such a fairground.

Crucially, the defendants allowed the company’s inflatables - which included a number of other inflatables besides the trampoline which exploded 0 to be operated despite not having, and not seeking, any operating instructions from the manufacturer.

Ava-May’s father, Nathan Rowe, said outside court that it was the ‘right decision’ and a ‘massive weight lifted from our shoulders’ when Johnson was jailed (Norfolk Constabulary/PA)

They also failed to have their inflatables properly annually checked and certified by an independent expert under the ADIPS scheme, a scheme for checks comparable to MoT checks for vehicles.

The judge, jailing Johnson for six months, said: “I reflect on the suffering and anguish the family have been through.

“Ultimately a child unnecessarily lost their life because of failures on your part to ensure you had appropriate risk assessments in place.”

Ava-May’s parents, who sat in the public gallery, hugged after the sentence was passed as wider members of the family wiped tears from their eyes.

Chloe Littleboy, Ava-May’s mother, said: “Birthdays are always at her bench in the park. Balloons, flowers, cakes and sweets decorate it and the whole family go there together to celebrate. That’s now the family ‘thing’, spending her birthday, Christmas and the anniversary of her death all together.”

Johnson showed no reaction as he was led to the cells.

Johnson and his company Johnsons Funfair Ltd, both of Swanston’s Road, Great Yarmouth, had entered guilty pleas to two health and safety offences at an earlier hearing.

The judge also disqualified Johnson from being a company director for five years and fined Johnsons Funfair Ltd £20,000.

The full costs to the council and HSE, of almost £300,000, were also awarded with the court previously told that Johnson had an insurance policy in place that would cover this.