Report on Bonani from home town newspaper

[Brad]

Bonani ‘blessed’ that injury wasn’t worse

Published:

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:01 AM EDT

Maikon Bonani remembers most of the incident well.

The specific details are fuzzy and frightening – Bonani was working as an attendant on a Busch Gardens gondola ride in July when he reached to make sure a door latch was secured. Next thing he knew, he was dangling off the bottom of the ride.

“It was more instinct than anything,” he said. “The good thing about it all is while it was happening. I was actually thinking. As I was holding on, I thought about, ‘can I hold on?’ It’s a 2 1/2 minute wait until the next station, and the thing was just going to keep getting higher. So if I took a chance, I might have fallen higher and on concrete or on top of people.

“So once I was up there, I looked down and there were rocks the first couple of feet, and I was like, ‘I can’t fall on rocks.’ And then there was a landscaped area, and that’s when I decided to let go,” he continued. “You have to do something.”

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