Tragedy at bungee attraction as boys thrown to their deaths in front of parents

Two teenagers died on the night of August 10, 1993, when they fell 150 feet from a bungee jumping ride at the Beach Bungee attraction in Atlantic Beach on the Grand Strand in the North Myrtle Beach Atlantic Beach region of South Carolina. The victims were 17-year-old Zachary Steinke and 19-year-old Michael Nash, who worked as the attraction's bungee jump master.

As the pair were raised to a height of roughly 150 to 160 feet within the steel jump cage, they were unaware that the ride's original chain-driven hoist mechanism was faulty. Rather than fixing the defect with a proper identical replacement part, the owners had chosen to install an improvised commercial shrimping winch alongside a wire cable. The evening was particularly wet and rainy, reducing visibility as the cage ascended. The wire rope was unable to handle the load and, after being strained, it snapped. The cage plummeted to the ground, leaving both teens with catastrophic impact injuries from which neither would recover.

In a devastating twist, Zachary's parents were watching from the ground and had to look on in horror as their son fell to his death. They are said to have attempted CPR before emergency services arrived.

Attorney for the families John Kassel explained how the cable came to snap: "Without relieving the tension the cable would eventually fail and break. The scenario is well understood and actually has a name two-blocking. Unfortunately the bungee jump winch system had no safety devices of any kind. The system two-blocked."

In 1995, the families won a 12 million dollar judgment against the individual owners of Beach Bungee. The court ruled the owners could be held personally liable because they bypassed safety systems by installing the faulty shrimping winch in a bid to avoid losing summer tourist business. Kassel subsequently pursued a second case against the South Carolina Department of Labor, securing a 2 million dollar verdict that was affirmed on appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court.