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WILDWOODS - Shortly after noon on June 3, the entire resort community was devastated to learn that an extremely rare event had taken the life of a young child on Morey’s Mariner’s Landing Pier. 11-year-old Abiah Jones, a student at Pleasantech Academy in Pleasantville, N.J. - who was visiting the pier as part of its annual “Education Extravaganza,” along with hundreds of other deserving students in grades 3 to 12 - somehow fell from the upper half of the 156-foot-tall Giant Wheel Ferris wheel. The pier had just opened for the day only minutes before the accident and there were reportedly hundreds of other children and pier employees present at the time, yet no one apparently saw how or why the child had fallen from the locked gondola. Mariner’s Landing was immediately closed as local and state officials began an investigation of the incident by questioning pier employees and management. What they learned was that the ride had passed its last inspection on March 17, the child was riding in the gondola alone with the gate still locked, and there had been absolutely no malfunction of the Ferris wheel or the individual gondola itself. Although the pier reopened the next day, the Giant Wheel remained closed for several days out of respect for the child’s family, according to pier management. It has since reopened. The state of New Jersey’s official report recommended that no one should be allowed to ride in a car alone and that the minimum height limit be increased to 54 inches. The Morey Organization has agreed with the report but has also voluntarily increased the height limit to 60 inches.
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