NEW ROADS - After receiving documents about the incident where two girls fell from a Ferris wheel at last year's New Roads Harvest Festival, the WBRZ Investigative Unit learned that the ride's manufacturer knew about issues with the ride years before the incident.

Following a public records request, our team received the investigative report from the Louisiana State Fire Marshal, which includes a 2017 letter from the company acknowledging the issue, witness statements and a video showing exactly what the operator said caused the ride to malfunction.

(2017 letter from Wadkins Expo Wheel.)

Two girls, approximately 11 and 13 years old, were injured when they fell from the Ferris wheel; a third girl was in the same tub, but she did not fall out.  

They were all riding in "tub 16" in the "Expo Wheel" operated by Crescent City Amusements. According to investigators, the door on tub 16 was open when the tub reached the top of the wheel. The open door caught on a spoke, which prevented the tub from staying level as the wheel continued to rotate, causing the tub to invert and dump the riders out.
According to the report, the two girls fell approximately 10 to 12 feet onto the metal decking of the ride. 

The ride operator, Eduin Roberto Funes Funes, told investigators he locked and secured the doors when the three girls entered the tub.

According to his statement, he assumed they opened the doors, not realizing the danger in doing so. Investigators later found that Funes Funes' work visa had expired Oct. 31, the day before the incident.

The girls, in their statements, deny opening the door. One of them writes that they noticed the door was open, and they were trying to get the worker's attention, but were unsuccessful. 

(Statement form from one of the girls.)

"So then the ride started going and the cart is starting to flip. We are all screaming and crying. And (redacted) fell on top of me. Then I saw a man at the cart below us, and I held on as long as I could, and then I let go because I couldn't hang on for any longer," one of the victims writes. Both were treated at the hospital for their injuries.

The Expo Wheel had been inspected by third-party inspector Gerald Lamb the day before the incident, Oct. 31, and was documented as having "no problem at time of inspection," according to the Office of State Fire Marshal audit.

Greg Brooks, owner of Crescent City Amusements, made a video after the incident showing how an open tub door will catch another part of the ride as it crests the top of the wheel, preventing the tub from staying horizontal and eventually causing it to invert. Brooks said in his statement that the manufacturer, Wadkins, had not developed a repair or modification for the issue and that he, as the ride owner, is not allowed to modify the ride without direction from the manufacturer.

On Nov. 14, Wadkins Expo Wheel, Inc. president Roger Wadkins, Jr. issued a mandatory update acknowledging that on Expo Wheels manufactured between 2007 and 2017, warning operators of the issue with "spoke 16," saying the mounts will catch on a tub door that is not secured in the closed position and cause the tub to invert, dumping the occupants out.  He references the "incident that occurred in Louisiana" in his letter.

A similar incident without injuries was reported in Florida in February 2017, when four teenagers were riding in a carrier on an Expo Wheel, and the carrier began to roll.

WBRZ reached out to the Office of the State Fire Marshal regarding whether their investigation will result any charges; we are awaiting response.