This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Lagoon ride operator was arrested for allegedly assaulting three 11-year-old boys who wanted one last ride Sunday night.
Seth Maycock, 19, was booked into the Davis County Jail on suspicion of class A misdemeanor child abuse.
Near closing time on Sunday, the three boys approached Maycock and asked for one last ride on the Samurai. Apparently a verbal altercation between the boys and Maycock erupted.
"The ride operator took offense and decided to get physical with the boys," said Lt. Parish Snyder of the Farmington Police Department.
Maycock hit one boy on the jaw multiple times, then hit another in the chest and knocked another to the ground, hitting him in the throat, Snyder said.
Park security detained Maycock until police arrived. The three boys received medical treatment for minor injuries at the scene and were released, Snyder said.
"At any given time, you have between 8,000 and 22,000 people at Lagoon. Stuff is going to happen," Snyder said. "But it's very rare that you have an employee assault patrons."
Lagoon fired Maycock immediately and are looking into the situation, said Dick Andrew, vice president of marketing.
He said in the decades he has worked for the amusement park, he has not heard of a situation where an employee assaulted a patron.
"As I understand it, there was a little bruising involved here. It wasn't a knock-down, drag-out kind of thing," Andrew said. "But our employees have received training in handling things in a diplomatic manner, and this certainly, certainly shouldn't have escalated to the point that it did."
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