An 11-year-old boy was accidentally stabbed in the foot by a haunted house worker who was trying to scare the child at the 7 Floors of Hell attraction set up at an Ohio fair, News 5 Cleveland reports. Thankfully, the boy suffered only minor injuries, but the incident has left many outraged.
- The haunted house worker was holding a real bowie knife. The worker, identified as 22-year-old Christopher Pogozelski, was attempting to strike the ground next to the boy with the knife but instead pierced his Crocs and cut his big toe, according to a police report.
- The boy wasn’t scared by the man. As Karen Bednarski, the victim’s mother recalled: “He walked up to my son and he was holding the knife and his intentions were to scare him, but my son responded to him by saying, ‘That’s fake. I’m not scared.’ I’m highly upset.”
- The owner of the 7 Floors of Hell attraction was pretty blase about the whole thing. Rodney Geffert, president of the attraction’s parent company, Night Scream Entertainment, brushed off the seriousness of the issue, saying only: “I guess he got a little too close. It was a complete accident and poked the boy’s toe.”
- The victim’s mother is none too pleased with the reaction. Bednarski said that not only did they initially deny her son medical aid because “they were not certified to administer first aid,” but they basically didn’t care about what happened. “They just kept saying accidents happen, accidents happen,” she said.
- Police took the knife from Pogozelski. He told authorities that he brought the knife from home to use as a prop but admitted that “using the knife was not a good idea.” Geffert later insisted that employees are only permitted to use rubber prop knives provided by the company.
- Bednarski is now pressing charges against Pogozelski. A summons was sent to him, Lt. Tom Walker of the Berea Police Department confirmed. “The biggest thing for me is, you know, I don’t understand the mental state of this man,” Bednarski said. “There’s got to be something wrong with him, and he should not be working at an establishment like that. That’s what makes me upset.”
