A 10-year-old girl who died after being ejected from a carnival ride in New Jersey was an upbeat and “beloved” student at her elementary school, administrators and classmates said.
Hailey McMullen, a fifth-grader at Deerfield Township Elementary School, died at a hospital Saturday after being thrown from a spinning “Xtreme” ride at the four-day Deerfield Township Harvest Festival. Administrators at the school identified Hailey on Monday, the Vineland Daily Journal reports.
“It is with deep and profound sadness that I inform you of the loss of one of our beloved students,” Deerfield Township School District Chief Administrator Mary Steinhauer-Kula said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Hailey’s family, our entire school community and all who knew and loved her.”
Grief counselors will be available to students returning to school Tuesday after Columbus Day, Steinhauer-Kula said.
Krystal DeFeo, who works at a Dollar Store near the Cumberland County festival site, said she was “just feet away” from the ride when Hailey, of Deerfield Township, was ejected.
“It was petrifying, it was chaotic, to say the least,” DeFeo recalled. “It felt like a movie, like slow motion. People were running towards it, people were running away, it was just scary.”
DeFeo’s son, who also attends Deerfield Township Elementary, didn’t know Hailey but “can’t unsee what he saw that night,” his mother said.
“It’s terrible, we saw the actual incident occur, the very aftermath like right as soon as it happened,” DeFeo said. “They couldn’t contain the chaos for the first few moments after it happened.”
Mourners left a makeshift memorial of balloons on Monday at the store, KYW-TV reports.
Gov. Phil Murphy told reporters Monday at an unrelated event that a probe by the state Department of Community Affairs is ongoing, NJ.com reports.
“It’s a tragedy,” Murphy said. “How many carnivals have we all gone to? This poor girl. Just an awful tragedy.”
State police, meanwhile, had no additional information to release Monday, the Daily Journal reports. A message seeking additional comment early Tuesday was not immediately returned.
The girl’s death has been especially hard on Hailey’s friends and classmates.
“He is sick,” Terry Banks told WPVI of his son. “He is hurting. He’s laying in the house sleeping, won’t get up. I don’t even know how the kids are supposed to go to school tomorrow.”