A teenager has described watching his 14-year-old friend being crushed to death after he climbed into a closed fairground ride in Dover. Mackenzie Croxford-Cook, from Deal in Kent, died on August 3 last year after entering the Forest Amusements Family Funfair in Pencester Gardens in Dover before it opened to the public.
He and a number of friends gained access to the funfair and used the dodgems and trampolines before Mackenzie was trapped and fatally injured on a “superstar” machine named Body Count. An inquest at County Hall in Maidstone heard that the spinning ride consists of several arms with four-seat gondolas attached.
DS Anthony Welsh, from Kent Police, summarised the statement of one of Mackenzie’s friends, who witnessed the incident. The teenage boy said he and Mackenzie met up at 3am in Deal before taking the early train to Dover.
