On May 12th, 2017, 15 month old Pressley Bartonek was attending Evans United Shows carnival at Towne West in Wichita, Kansas with her family when she held onto a gate surrounding a bouncy house and went unconscious. Westar energy was called and found the gate charged with 290 volts of electricity. Pressley was hospitalized in critical condition. Sadly, after five difficult days of fighting for her life, she passed away.
Currently Kansas law requires temporary amusement parks to submit inspections that happened within 30 days prior to opening. They are not required to inspect the temporary amusement park immediately after each set up and prior to each opening. Had this been required, this fatal accident could have been prevented. I truly believe that a thorough inspection would have led to finding the issues which led to this tragedy.
I am calling for the State of Kansas to immediately require all temporary amusement parks to go through an inspection process after each new set up and prior to each and every opening. Doing so will help to prevent injury and death of innocent children and individuals in Kansas. Thank you for your attention to this very important matter.
