Teen’s Carowinds trip ends in handcuffs, injury and a false accusation, lawsuit says
All Linda Washington’s son wanted was to ride the roller coaster at Carowinds with his friends.
Instead, the 14-year-old was harassed and falsely accused of fighting by the park’s security personnel — then tackled and handcuffed by an off-duty Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer as he tried to flee, according to a new lawsuit by his mother.
According to the suit, the boy was badly traumatized by the experience and left with a broken finger.
Washington’s complaint, filed by Charlotte attorney Yolanda Trotman, accuses Carowinds and two of its employees, along with the City of Charlotte and police Officer Richard Vivas, of a list of civil violations — from assault and battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress to negligence and improper search and seizure.
The lawsuit also names Carowinds’ owner, Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., as a defendant.
Raleigh attorney Bill Pollock, who represents Carowinds and Cedar Fair in the case, told The Charlotte Observer that it’s his clients’ policy “to not comment on pending litigation.”
Attorneys for the city and Vivas did not respond to Observer emails this week seeking a response.
Pulled out of line
A Carolinas entertainment staple for almost a half century, Carowinds draws up to 2 million customers annually to its 400-acre site on the state line. The park’s motto: “Where the Carolinas Come Together.”
Washington’s lawsuit describes a radically different experience for her son. The youth is named in the document. But because he is still a minor, the Observer is identifying him by his initials, K.I.
According to the complaint, K.I. visited the park with a group of his friends on April 27, 2019. All of them were minors.
While waiting in line for a roller coaster, K.I. and five or six of his companions began “horseplaying among themselves to pass the time” without disrupting other patrons.
Nonetheless, the lawsuit claims, they were approached by a group of park security guards who pulled K.I. and his friends out of the line, saying they had received a report from another Carowinds employee that the youths had been fighting. K.I. and his friends said repeatedly they were only roughhousing among themselves.
The guards then began to take K.I. and his companions to another location in the park. According to the lawsuit, the guards then tried to separate K.I. from the others. One guard showed his baton, shoved K.I., then warned his friends that if they kept following K.I., they would “end up just like him,” the lawsuit claims.
As the purported harassment by the guards continued, K.I. panicked, the complaint alleges. He broke away from the grip of one of the guards and began running toward the park’s exit.
The uniformed Vivas, according the lawsuit, gave chase. He “tackled and slammed” K.I. to the ground, handcuffed him, then brought him back inside the park. K.I. was taken to a holding room, where he remained handcuffed.
Vivas, according to the complaint, took the youth’s phone and wallet “without justification or consent.”
Suit: Son found ‘in distress’
A mother of one of the friends eventually interceded, telling the officer that another Carowinds employee had told everyone involved that the kids had not been fighting in the roller coaster line.
After being called by another parent, Washington drove to the park and found her son in a badly torn shirt, still handcuffed, and “clearly in distress.” He also had a broken finger, Trotman said.
K.I. was eventually released from the handcuffs and allowed to leave.
The lawsuit also names two unidentified Carowinds employees as defendants — the one who called in the original report of fighting that led to K.I. being “assaulted, battered and, eventually detained in handcuffs,” and the other who, with Vivas, “unlawfully threatened to touch and actually touched (K.I.) in an unlawful, harmful or offensive manner.”
The complaint has asked for a jury trial along with punitive and compensatory damages.
The case was originally filed in Mecklenburg County but was moved to the federal courts of the Western District of North Carolina at the request of the city.
It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn.
This story was originally published June 6, 2022 at 6:25 AM with the headline "Teen’s Carowinds trip ends in handcuffs, injury and a false accusation, lawsuit says."
