The nightmare returns again and again for Sophia Castillo, even when she’s wide awake in the scorching daylight of a Central Valley summer.
Her crew-cut little boy having fun at the county fair. Her little boy jumping alone aboard the Ferris wheel. Her little boy panicking and bolting from the swinging basket 90 feet high. Hanging for dear life, just six years of it lived.
Reuben Castillo clung there from a steel spoke of the ride, nine stories up, for half a minute before plunging to his death Sunday afternoon. His horrified mother and sister watched from the ground.
-Eric Bailey, L.A. Times June 23, 2006