Eight acrobats crashed to the ground before an audience of witnesses, mainly children, when a hair-hanging chandelier stunt went wrong during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performance in Providence, R.I.
The accident occurred about 45 minutes into the performance as eight female performers hang like a human chandelier using their hair. The metal-frame apparatus from which the performers were hanging came free from the metal truss according to Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros. The apparatus crashed down onto a dancer below, bringing the total to nine circus performers who face serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The women are all conscious and their injuries being tended to at Rhode Island Hospital.
Video of the accident taken by an audience member in the stands shows the curtain coming up as the dancers begin their act under the spotlight. The women are seen falling as the audience gasps not believing what is happening.
Audience members who witnessed the accident at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence quickly realized the accident was not a part of the show. Circus officials turned the lights off so that audience members could not see the medical professionals carrying the performers away on stretchers. “One of the performers was crying,” Othello Smith, an audience member, said. “It looked pretty bad.”
Future performances of the show on Sunday and Monday were suspended so that public safety officials could look into what went wrong according to Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare. On Monday they Pare said they have identified a clamp that snapped that held them to the rafters dropping them 40 feet to the ground below.
Photo Credit: Bob Breidenbach/The Providence Journal