It is an amazing story of terror turned to triumph and it happened to a woman and her young daughter at a Florida amusement park this weekend.
Sherry Pinkerton was on something called the "Crazy Bus" ride at a local carnival in
Port Orange near Daytona Beach Saturday night, when something went terribly wrong. As other kids and their parents were getting off the ride, it suddenly started up again, trapping the young mother half in and half out of her seat.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Her baby daughter, two-year-old Gracie, had fallen out of the conveyance and was dangling precariously 40 feet above the ground as her terrified mom clutched her by the leg.
"While she was hanging from there, she just kept crying and saying 'help mommy!' but there was nothing I could do," Pinkerton recalls, with tears streaming down her face. "I couldn't hold both of us and I held onto her for as long as I could."
The emergency went on for just three minutes, but to horrified spectators it seemed like hours.
Many feared she'd let go at any minute and she appeared to be getting weaker the longer she dangled from the stuck contraption.
As witnesses screamed for help below, a group of 10-12 men gathered underneath the stopped amusement and shouted at the mother to drop the baby, assuring her they'd catch the child.
With no real choice and her strength fading, Pinkerton released her tight grasp. But even that wasn't easy. "I let go of her and she grabbed my shirt," she recalls. "So I had to pry her hands off my shirt and let her fall."
With nothing left to hang on to, the infant began plummeting to the hard concrete surface below.
But the rescuers were true to their word and before she could hit the ground, several of them managed to catch her and lift her gently to safety. Firefighters finally arrived and put up their ladder, taking the relieved mother out of her temporary trap.
The grateful mom and her daughter departed the scene, thanking those who had made the improbable rescue. Despite the obvious danger, neither was seriously injured.
"I'm so incredibly thankful to everyone that was there and was able to help her," Pinkerton relates.
Officials tested the ride after the incident but couldn't find anything wrong with it. The mom suspects operator error and believes the man running the attraction simply forgot to apply the brakes.
It was shut down for the duration of the carnival.