Police in France are investigating the death of a 14-year-old Spanish girl who lost consciousness while riding a roller coaster at Disneyland Resort Paris.
The cause of the girl's death remained unclear last night. Prosecutors said that a post-mortem examination showed she did not appear to have died from trauma. They are investigating whether she had suffered from previous health problems. A preliminary inspection of the Rock'n'Roller Coaster ride found no malfunctions with the machinery, Disneyland spokesman Pieter Boterman said. He said the girl boarded the ride on Monday at the theme park in Marne-la-Vallee, east of Paris, and when the ride stopped, her friends found her unconscious.
Medical teams at the theme park tried to revive her, but by the time the ambulance arrived, the girl had died, he said. Disneyland authorities immediately shut down the ride.
Mr Boterman said the park was waiting to learn the cause of the girl's death before determining whether to reopen the ride, which is at Walt Disney Studios Park, one of two theme parks at Disneyland Resort Paris.
The incident comes almost a year to the day that a 12-year-old boy slumped over and died while riding Walt Disney's Rock'n'Roller Coaster ride in Florida. Michael Russell died on June 29 last year despite strenuous efforts by his Green Beret father to resuscitate him. The ride at Disney-MGM Studios was closed while an investigation was carried out.
The death was the seventh in 18 months involving people stricken at Walt Disney attractions, according to Florida state records at the time. None of the other six deaths involved accidents. In some of the cases, post-mortem tests found existing, dangerous medical conditions.
Disney later said 36.6 million people had ridden Rock'n'Roller Coaster since its 1999 debut. There had been no previously reported deaths or any major injuries since at least 2002 in the Florida theme park.
Until last June, according to Florida state records, there had been six other deaths associated with Disney attractions since the 2004 Christmas season. It is only in recent years that amusement parks in the US have been required to report accidents. A law, which came into effect in 2000, requiring such reporting was prompted, in part, by a 1998 incident at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in which a tourist was fatally struck by a loose metal cleat on the Columbia sailing ship.
In that case, Disney officials delayed Anaheim police for 90 minutes while workers cleaned up the scene.
Disneyland Resort Paris has had 170 million visits since it opened in 1992. Today it employs 12,600 "cast members". It lost £65m in 2005.
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