Richmond trampoline park didn't call 911 after report of adult pulling child's pants down

The Vancouver woman who reported a suspicious incident at Extreme Air Park in Richmond tells Daily Hive she’s disappointed she was the first one to contact police more than four hours after it happened.

Monica Wong took four kids to the indoor trampoline park on March 14, and was watching them from the parent room when she noticed a man alone with a child in a dark corner near the rock-climbing wall.

Extreme Air Park has a TV that cycles through video feeds from various parts of the park, so Wong only had a few seconds to see what was going on before the monitor switched to a different camera.

“It looked like he was touching the kid, like their body,” Wong said. “I was like, this is really fishy. But then it loops again. And this time he was on his knees and he made a pulling down gesture — I thought it would have been the pants.”

The lights were off in the main room for a glow-in-the-dark experience, so Wong couldn’t make out the figures clearly — only that the adult appeared to be a man and the child appeared young, perhaps four to six years old.

She went to the front desk to report what she saw, and suggested the park call police.

The front desk employee apparently told Wong she was the fourth person to complain in five minutes. The other complaints had apparently been about a man in a grey sweater luring children off the trampoline.

Wong didn’t understand why the park hadn’t already called police, and informed them she may have seen a man pull a child’s pants down.

After Wong’s complaint, Extreme Air Park staff turned on the lights and went to go check the area. According to a news release from Richmond RCMP, staff didn’t see anything suspicious.

The Vancouver mom went home, made dinner, and still felt uncomfortable about what she saw. She phoned police around 8 pm to report the incident, and learned she was the first one to call in.

Richmond RCMP launched an investigation and alerted the public about what happened. But on Friday, Cpl. Dennis Hwang said based on the footage it doesn’t appear anything criminal in nature happened.

“At the time of the original [news] release, the video had not been provided and/or reviewed,” Hwang said.

“Video also does not capture everything and from every angle. Nor does video work particularly well in the dark. It is far better to have more information than little to no information.”

Wong hopes that the child in the video is OK, and said since it was dark she can’t be sure what happened. She hopes it was a parent with their child, or a staff member helping a child out of a rock climbing harness.

“I want to be wrong on this,” she said. “But even if there’s a slight chance I saw what I did, it’s got to be addressed.”

She’s speaking out because she’s disappointed with how Extreme Air Park handled the incident. She doesn’t understand why staff didn’t immediately investigate based on the first complaint or why police weren’t contacted right away.

In BC, it’s mandatory to report suspected child abuse to police or a child welfare worker.

A manager at Extreme Air Park in Richmond refused to comment for this story, and referred questions to the business’ head office. Head office has not replied to multiple requests for comment.

Extreme Air Park Richmond is the same trampoline park where a father died in 2018 after breaking his neck jumping into the foam pit. A customer told The Richmond News at the time he called 911, not staff.

For now, Wong said she’ll be accompanying her kids into entertainment experiences instead of watching from a distance — at least until they’re old enough to fend off unwanted adult attention.

“Just watch your kids,” she said. “You never know. This experience truly opened up my eyes.”