A funfair owner has been jailed for six months after an exploding trampoline killed a three-year-old girl.
Ava-May Littleboy was thrown higher than a house when the inflatable exploded while she was playing on it during a day out at Gorleston-on-Sea beach in Norfolk on 1 July 2018.
Curt Johnson, the operations manager of Johnson’s Funfair Ltd, admitted breaching safety regulations. He was sentenced at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Friday 10 November 2023.
District judge Christopher Williams said Johnson was “wilfully blind to the risk” and that the inflatable “should not have been in use”. He said a deterrent sentence was necessary.
Ava-May’s parents, Chloe Littleboy and Nathan Rowe, hugged after the sentence was passed. Johnson, 52, showed no reaction as he was led to the cells.
The judge also disqualified Johnson from being a company director for five years and fined Johnsons Funfair Ltd £20,000. He awarded the full costs to the council and HSE, of almost £300,000, with the court previously told that Johnson had an insurance policy in place that would cover this.
