In Tasmania, six school-age children leaped to their deaths. When a freak wind gust blew the schoolchildren off the edge to fall more than thirty feet to their deaths during Devonport’s Hillcrest Primary School’s end-of-year celebrations, and just days before Christmas, the nation was left devastated by the catastrophe.
The funerals for the sixth-graders were scheduled to take place on Friday morning. Glen Sheehan, the father of Jye, had a terrible accident that left him in a coma at the time of his son’s death. However, he awoke from his coma early Friday in time to learn about his child’s death before being buried. Glen was not permitted to leave the hospital’s intensive care unit and had no means of attending the services due to his poor health.
The death of Jye and the medical issues surrounding Glen was described by a family member to Daily Mail Australia as a “tricky situation.” Because the Sheehans must face these two devastating events on back-to-back days, they are attempting to cope one day at a time. Fortunately, their neighborhood showed its support with kind words and tributes for Jye, who was due to start high school in the following year.
“Absolutely devastated,” one person wrote on Facebook.
“Rest easy little man,” a cousin posted on Facebook.
A close family member of Jye recounted the young boy as being continually happy and possessing a great sense of humor.
“He was such a happy young man full of so much energy and would make all the children laugh,” she stated.
The six children who lost their lives in the tragic jumping castle accident were Jye, Addison Stewart, 11, Zane Mellor, 12, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, 12, Peter Dodt, 12, and Chace Harrison, 11. They were all celebrating with classmates at the end-of-the-year party when a gust of wind knocked them off the edge of the jumping castle to their deaths.
The parents of these children had planned to spend Christmas with them and give them gifts. Instead, devastated parents were forced to use their Christmas vacations to arrange funerals for their kids as a result of the freak accident.
Two other people survived the freak accident but are still hospitalized and in critical condition. They were transferred to Royal Hobart Hospital last week where they have been recovering from terrible injuries including multiple broken bones, blunt force trauma, and internal bleeding.
Beau Medcraft, the ninth child ejected from an airborne bouncy castle, is recuperating at home after being discharged from the hospital.
