Kick in the Tube: Pelican Harbor Target of Another Lawsuit

By Joseph Hosey

One moment Phyneice Casey and her son Presten were perched atop an inflatable tube, and the next thing they knew a water park worker's kick had sent them sprawling unprotected down a slide, according to a lawsuit filed in Will County court.

Casey is suing Pelican Harbor Aquatic Park and the Bolingbrook Park District for the injuries she and her son supposedly suffered on the slide in August.

Casey's lawsuit was the second filed against Pelican Harbor and the park district in a little more than a month. In the previous suit, a woman claimed she was knocked unconscious near the end of a ride down a water slide.

Casey says in her suit that to ride down the slide she was injured on, one was required to "sit in a 'figure 8' inner tube provided by Pelican Harbor Water Park."

She apparently planned on abiding by that rule but found herself unseated—due to an untimely kick by a Pelican Harbor employee, the lawsuit said.

"The open water slide had an attendant at the top," the lawsuit said, and this employee assisted people in and out of the tube before "gently pushing" and "nudging" them along.

But instead of gently pushing or nudging her and her son, "the slide attendant kicked the inner tube ... in such a violent manner that the inner tube was caused to flip upside down ejecting both" Casey and her son, the lawsuit said.

The two went down the slide without a tube to protect them, the suit said, and ended up with injuries they "will continue to suffer on into the future."

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