A 10-year-old girl has died after her dream of riding the longest water slide in an indoor Michigan water park turned deadly when she went into cardiac arrest.
London Eisenbeis, 10, passed away on March 3, 2018 after riding the Super Loop Speed Slide at Zehnder’s Splash Village in Frankenmuth, Michigan, during which her heart rate spiked due to Long QT syndrome, which causes abnormal rhythms and which she and her family hadn’t known she suffered from, and sent her into cardiac arrest.
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Eisenbeis had looked forward to taking the plunge for years, and had visited the water park with her family in February of 2018 after she finally met the 48 inch height requirement for the slide, which plunges riders down 273 feet with a 360-degree loop in just 6.9 seconds, according to the water park’s website.
“London looked at her dad, gave two thumbs up and smiled, went down the slide and came out in cardiac arrest,” Eisenbeis’ mother, Tina, told The Sun. “The excitement threw her rhythm.”
“The slide she went down has a heartbeat sound at the top that my husband said made it even scarier,” she added. “Who would have ever thought she would come out the bottom without one?”
According to Tina, as she waited for her daughter and husband to go down the slide, she noticed a whistle going off and children evacuating the pools,” though she only thought “there’s probably kids messing around.” After walking to where the commotion was, she discovered that it was her own daughter who was in trouble.
“[Jerry] was looking down and there were sheets up and I knew it was one of my kids,” she told the outlet. “It was an awful thing.”
Eisenbeis was transported to Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw and later airlifted to the University of Michigan’s children’s hospital, where she remained for nine days on life support, during which time doctors discovered she suffered from Long QT syndrome and had gone into cardiac arrest.
On Feb. 27, the 10-year-old passed away and was laid to rest on March 3.
According to her mother, “there had been no signs of the condition, she just dropped,” and Eisenbeis had “been doing flips in the air” just the day before.
“You never know when it’s going to happen,” Tina added. “You never think it’s going to happen to you and this is not a club you want to be part of.”
In the wake of Eisenbeis’ death, her parents, Tina and Jerry, have established London Strong, a non-profit foundation that offers small-cost CPR/AED training classes and raises money place defibrillators around the community, which they say could have potentially saved their daughter’s life had one been on hand at the water park.
