‘I hope it haunts you’: Mother lashes out after jumping castle tragedy verdict

Tasmanian Education Minister Sarah Courtney visited the site of the tragedy in 2021. Photo / NewsWire, Grant Viney

A mother has erupted in court after the operator of a jumping castle was found not guilty of health and safety breaches following the deaths of six children.

Rosemary Gamble, the sole operator of Taz-zorb, was charged with failure to comply with health and safety duty after a jumping castle at Hillcrest Primary School was lifted 10m into the air by a freak gust of wind, or a “dust devil”, about 10am on December 16, 2021.

The jumping castle landed some 75m away, resulting in the deaths of students Chace Harrison, 11, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, 12, Zane Mellor, 12, Addison Stewart, 11, Jye Sheehan, 12, and Peter Dodt, 12, who suffered injuries which led to their deaths.

Magistrate Robert Webster appeared via video link from Hobart on Friday, and, in a short address to the court, said he was not satisfied the threshold of evidence required to satisfy the charges had been met, and that Gamble and her employees could have done nothing to prevent the catastrophic events.

Webster noted that Gamble failed to comply with her work, health and safety duties to the children “in some respects”.

However, he found that the failures were not “a substantial or significant cause of the children being exposed to the risk of serious injury or death”.

Zane Mellor, 12, was among the six children killed. Photo / Supplied

After the verdict was read out and proceedings ended, Zane’s mother, Georgie Burt, began shouting from the public gallery.

“My son, Zane Mellor, these children, I hope it haunts you, I hope you see them every single time they miss a Christmas, miss a birthday,” the grieving woman shouted.

After the public gallery had emptied, Gamble burst into tears.

Outside the courthouse, Rihanna Goodson, the mother of Jalailah Jones was in tears.

“A lot of people have been tortured by this,” Jones said.

“I don’t blame any one individual, I just feel sorry for everyone.”

Amy Dettmer was one of the first people on the scene on the day.

Dettmer said she was upset by the way Webster delivered the decision remotely.

“How (the decision) was delivered was insensitive,” Dettmer said.

“My world has changed after that day, as it has for so many people. I just think we deserved better.”

Webster declined to comment in response. It is understood he had other criminal matters listed in Hobart on Friday.

Jerome Pape, the school principal of Hillcrest Primary at the time, provided evidence during the trial.

“When the jumping castle was set up, I would describe the conditions as very calm, a beautiful day with little to no breeze,” Pape wrote in a sworn statement.

“I felt a strong breeze which came out of nowhere.

“The jumping castle took off and flew to the other side of the oval, so maybe 75 metres away … This entire wind event was over in seconds.”

Pape wrote he believed it was “an absolutely freak event, in no way foreseeable or preventable”.

Webster agreed, concluding in his judgment: “This tragic incident occurred … due to an unprecedented weather system, namely a dust devil.

“The dust devil was impossible to predict.”

The judgment concluded the winds were so strong that securing the jumping castle differently “would sadly have made no difference to the ultimate outcome”.

Friday’s decision only relates to proceedings under work, health and safety legislation which involved the criminal test that any negligence would need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Questions remain about civil litigation brought on behalf of the people impacted by the tragedy, which would be decided on the balance of probabilities – a lower legal threshold.

And outside court a lawyer from the national personal injury firm Maurice Blackburn addressed the media.

Principal Dimi Ioannou said she represented some of the families who had lost their children and other witnesses impacted by the tragedy.

“We’ll be pushing for a public inquest and we would be holding the operators accountable over what happened,” Ioannou said.

“The families all want a public inquest because they want to see people be held accountable for this awful tragedy.

“We will be pursuing a class action on behalf of the families in relation to the alleged negligence that has occurred … on the State (of Tasmania) and on Taz-Zorb.

“We would welcome an early settlement on behalf of the families rather than putting them through this process again.

“But what we will be looking at is that this outcome today is disappointing but it also stands a chance where we could show and prove that people have to take safety precautions when they are supplying equipment and goods to a school for an event for children.”

The inquest into the Hillcrest tragedy has already been the subject of unusual litigation in the Tasmanian Supreme Court.

In 2023 the Tasmanian work, health and safety regulator, WorkSafe, refused to hand over its investigative documents to Coroner Olivia McTaggart.

WorkSafe succeeded in securing a court order that effectively delayed the coronial inquest until today’s proceedings in the Magistrates Court were concluded.

At the time McTaggart labelled WorkSafe’s decision not to hand over details of what it had found “unfortunate”.