According to the Vancouver Sun, the mother of the girl recorded a video of her on the climbing wall at Funtopia in Surrey. The video shows the girl crying for help on the wall and the employee responsible for the safety of visitors ignoring her cries and continuing to use her phone. It continues for about one minute and can be seen here:
The girl’s mother posted it to her Facebook page and as of Thursday afternoon the video had been viewed about 9,500 times. “My daughter is crying up there and she is ON HER PHONE TEXTING!!!” wrote the mother in the Facebook post.
When confronted with the video, Funtopia responded to the post:
“The parent showed us this video yesterday. It’s really disturbing and definitely not normal. This particular employee has broke at least 3 internal rules, starting with no phones outside of the employees room. I can assure you that she will not work a single minute more in our location.”
The employee had worked at Funtopia for about six months and had received extensive rock-climbing training.
According to CBC News, the girl’s mother said of the video, “it broke my heart not to run and help my daughter right away but I needed to capture this as evidence.” Her actions have resulted in some online backlash from people who believe that she should have helped her daughter first. “It’s the world we now live in: Take pictures first, then help,” said one person who commented on Facebook. A person commenting on the CBC website wrote “If the child was in such distress, why didn’t the mother go to her aid? Why did she need proof?”
