Two former bosses of a trampoline park where 11 people broke their backs could face jail after admitting health and safety offences.
Scores of visitors at Flip Out Chester were being "injured on a daily basis" and three people sustained fractured spines there in one single day. They jumped from a 13ft high tower into a foam-filled pit - a piece of apparatus described at the time by bosses as the largest of its kind in the world.
But David Shuttleworth and Matthew Melling, both 33, pleaded guilty to health and safety offences when they appeared at Chester Crown Court last month. They now could spend two years each in jail.
Shuttleworth, from Barlaston, Staffordshire, and Melling, of Spinningfields, Manchester, admitted failing to preventing visitors being exposed to risk, charges which relate to an investigation into 270 known accidents over a seven-week period between December 2016 and February 2017.
During which, Liza Jones, 26, from Wrexham, north Wales, fractured her spine after jumping into the foam pit at the 40,000 sq ft centre. She launched legal action, after experiencing the "most pain I've ever suffered".
"I'm glad they've faced court action because I could have been left paralysed. The firms that are running them need to learn from this and ensure they've got proper health and safety in place," Liza told Mail Online.
George Magraw, then 21, from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, was told he needed months to recover after he also fractured his spine at the Flip Out park, jumping off the same tower structure. Speaking at the time, George's brother Phil told Cheshire Live: "Either there was insufficient foam in the pit or it's too old to make sure he has a soft landing.
"He landed on his bum and it's shattered a vertebrae in his lower back. They gave him an X-ray and said the disk had pretty much disintegrated. George is in a lot of pain and they said after the surgery he will need months to get back to normal or there could be complications."
In the first four months the park was open, ambulance crews attended the park on average once a week. The number of injuries eventually became so severe that medics from the nearby Countess of Chester Hospital called a meeting with the park bosses following a surge in A&E attendances, it is understood.
Lorraine Burnett, director of operations at The Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust, told the Wrexham Leader in March 2017: "In recent weeks we have seen an increase in patients arriving in our accident and emergency department reporting injuries from trampoline activities.
"Our clinicians have met with local trampoline facilities to develop a link and share information about the types of injuries we are seeing. We are grateful to our emergency department and orthopaedic specialists for taking time out of their already pressurised schedules to support this work."