Adorable boy, 7, left traumatized after city’s holiday drone display fell from sky and hit him, lawsuit claims

The seven-year-old boy who was struck when a Christmas drone display plummeted to the ground suffered ‘traumatic, permanent injuries’, a lawsuit alleges.

Alezander Edgerton was hit in the face and chest by a falling object after ‘multiple drones malfunctioned’ at the Lake Eola Park show in Orlando, Florida last December.

The youngster, whose parents allege he was immediately knocked out upon impact, was rushed to a nearby hospital for emergency open-heart surgery. 

He spent 10 days in the hospital, including celebrating Christmas in the intensive care unit, and is still recovering from his injuries nearly eight months later.

Although the drone crashed into a group of spectators, Alezander was the only person injured at the show gone awry.

His mother Adriana Edgerton has now filed a lawsuit against the city, several drone manufacturers and a software firm, accusing them of ‘negligence’.

Alezander ‘sustained traumatic, permanent injuries requiring medical treatment, and will continue to suffer physical, emotional, and financial harm,’ Edgerton’s complaint, which was reviewed by Daily Mail, states.

The suit also accuses Orlando of failing to ensure adequate safety measures were in place and of hiring a vendor with known prior incidents of drone malfunction.

Edgerton’s lawsuit was filed in Orange County Circuit Court on August 8 against the City of Orlando, Texas-based drone show company Sky Elements LLC, two American and South Korean drone manufacturers, and a Latvian software firm. 

It alleges that negligence and product defects caused the ‘preventable’ incident at the 500-drone performance on December 21 last year.

Sky Elements produced the show for the city using UVify IFO drones and flight software from SPH Engineering SIA, according to the suit.

Hundreds of red and green drones were meant to fly in holiday inspired formations, but something went wrong and several small drones collided and fell into a crowd.

‘Multiple drones malfunctioned, causing these drones to leave formation, deviate from the coordinated flight path and breach the designated geofenced perimeter,’ the complaint states.

Edgerton has accused of the city of not properly vetting the companies involved in the show and failing to ensure safety protocol were followed.

‘Defendant, City of Orlando, knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known that the Subject Drone Show involved high-risk aerial equipment and that the Subject Drones posed a foreseeable and unreasonable risk of harm to the public, including spectators,’ the complaint states. 

The lawsuit further accused the city of failing to confirm its vendors had ‘an established track record of safety and reliability, particularly in light of known prior drone failures at past shows involving the same vendors and technology’. 

The Edgerton family has also accused Sky Elements of operating the drone show without sufficient redundancies, safety features or trained personnel.

The firm ‘owed a duty’ to guests to confirm that the drones were safe and the show was properly staffed, the lawsuit alleges.

Sky Elements is accused of failing to ‘monitor the drones’ and ‘flight anomalies’, as well as failing to stop the show once problems arose.

The company also did not ‘train, supervise and manage the solo pilot in charge of the entire 500-drone’ show, the suit alleges.

Edgerton’s lawsuit accuses UVify and its South Korean affiliate of manufacturing defective drones that lacked ‘accurate geofencing capabilities’ and ‘functional kill-switch protocols’.

Similarly, SPH Engineering is accused of supplying inadequate software controls.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages for medical expenses, pain and suffering, and other losses. Edgerton has also requested a jury trial. 

The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report into the incident determined a missing flight path file caused the mishap.

The report, released in January this year, found several minor issues broke out just minutes after the program began.

At least five drones did not accept launch data, prompting officials to do a ‘soft reboot’ of the device network. 

Officials ended up pulling two drones that did not connect to the network. 

After the show began, the pilot reported that the drones did not launch ‘uniformly’ and began to crash into each other when shifting positions, the NTSB report states. 

NTSB investigators found the ‘launch parameter file’ containing the final flight data for the drones had not been sent and the ‘show center was not completely aligned’.

Following the disaster, several people shared videos on social media of what was supposed to be a delightful holiday event but turned into a living nightmare.

Philippe, from the X account MosquitoCoFL Podcast, was at the show with his son and thought to take out his phone when the drones started dropping out of the sky.

In his video, a child could be heard saying: ‘Are they supposed to be falling?’

Edgerton named and shamed the Orlando city government and Sky Elements in a Facebook post last year, revealing how she was ‘beyond terrified’ as Alezander prepared to go into surgery.

‘God please be with me! My baby is going into emergency heart surgery off of just trying to watch a drone show at Lake Eola Park!’ she wrote.

‘I am beyond words beyond terrified! City of Orlando Government and Sky Elements Drones really have some explaining to do. They will be held accountable for what was done to my son. I pray he makes it out of this!’

Daily Mail has approached the city and Sky Elements for comment.