page_title: Kentucky Kingdom
section_title: Superman: Tower of Power
hierarchical_section_title: Kentucky Kingdom / Incidents / Superman: Tower of Power
caption_attribution_description: English: Superman Tower of Power, 12 days before the 21 June 2007 incident
context_page_description: Kentucky Kingdom is an amusement park in Louisville, Kentucky. The 65-acre park includes a collection of amusement rides and a water park named Hurricane Bay. Kentucky Kingdom is located at the intersection of Interstate 65 and Interstate 264, sharing a parking lot with the Kentucky Exposition Center. The park originally opened on May 23, 1987, after years of planning by the Kentucky State Fair Board and Kentucky Entertainment Limited, the parks original operators, at a cost of $12 million. The park went bankrupt after one season, and was reopened in 1990 by businessman Ed Hart, who would reopen the park again on May 24, 2014, after it was closed by the park's third operator, Six Flags, in 2009. Kentucky Kingdom is owned by the Kentucky State Fair Board, and operated by Kentucky Kingdom, LLLP.
  Kentucky Kingdom's normal operating season runs from late April to early August. The park then reopens only on weekends until the end of October, the same month that the park hosts their Halloween-themed event, known as HalloScream.
  Kentucky Kingdom has six roller coasters: Kentucky Flyer, Lightning Run, Roller Skater, Storm Chaser, T3, and Thunder Run.
context_section_description: On June 21, 2007 at around 4:45 PM, a 13-year old girl named Kaitlyn Lassiter got on the Superman: Tower of Power with her two friends. When the ride was about 20 feet in the air, Lassiter claimed to have felt a jolt, and following that, Lassiter said "We looked up, and there were a bunch of cables falling." Then a cable fell on Lassiter, splitting her lip, causing a nose bleed, scratching her arms and legs, and wrapping around her neck. Lassiter then claimed she remembered "...smoke and the smell of burning. I felt like I was going to die," also mentioning that she, along with her friends, were yelling "Stop the ride," before it dropped to the ground. A park visitor, who witnessed the ride drop, said "It came back down and I seen the cable come back and hit a lot of people and I heard a lot of crying." Both of Lassiter's feet were severed due to the accident.
  Lassiter was transported to University of Louisville Hospital, before later being transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Doctors were able to reattach her right foot after the accident, but her left foot was too severely damaged to repair and had to be amputated below the knee. In a deposition in early 2008, John Schmidt, who was park’s ride-maintenance manager, said that park technicians never performed a hands-on inspection before the accident on any of the 10 cables on the Superman: Tower of Power. Schmidt also added that the cables were not lubricated monthly, and instead applied cornstarch to reduce "cable slippage" from over-lubrication. On May 14, 2008, Lassiter and her parents spoke on Capitol Hill about their support for a bill introduced by Ed Markey, a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, which would have allowed the federal government to oversee permanent rides at amusement parks. Lassiter's family sued Six Flags, which reached a settlement on November 21, 2008, that would provide "lifetime care" for Lassiter.
caption: Superman: Tower of Power, less than two weeks before the incident
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