4 killed on river rapids ride at Australian theme park

SYDNEY -- Four people including a young mother and her brother were killed Tuesday after a river rapids ride malfunctioned at a popular theme park on Australia's east coast, officials said.

Two men and two women died while on the ride at Dreamworld, a park on Queensland state's Gold Coast, Queensland police officer Tod Reid said.

Two children who were in the raft at the time of the accident were hospitalized, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said today. She did not detail the children's condition or explain their relationship to the victims.

The Thunder River Rapids ride whisks people in circular rafts along a fast-moving, man-made river. A malfunction caused two people to be thrown from their raft, while two others were caught in the ride, said Gavin Fuller, an officer with the Queensland Ambulance Service.

He did not know whether the two victims who were caught in the ride were trapped under water or caught in the machinery.

Park staffers administered first aid to the victims, but their injuries proved fatal, Fuller said.

Kim Dorsett of Canberra confirmed two of the victims were her children: Kate Goodchild, 32, and Luke Dorsett, 35.

"I have three children and have lost two of them today -- my whole family has been wiped out," she told The Courier-Mail newspaper.

Kim Dorsett was on a family vacation with her children and Goodchild's daughters from Canberra.

"I have two granddaughters -- an 8-month-old and a 12-year-old -- and it truly breaks my heart to know that my 8-month-old is never going to get to know her mom," she said.

Police have declined to identify the other two victims, a 38-year-old man and a 42 year-old woman.

Reports say the man was Luke Dorsett's partner from Canberra, and the woman was a New Zealand citizen who lived in Sydney.

Reid said he was not aware of previous problems with the ride. Police were interviewing witnesses and reviewing closed-circuit television footage of the incident while crews worked to remove the bodies from the scene Tuesday night, he said.

"It is a complex retrieval involving heavy equipment, and that will take several hours," Reid said.

Dreamworld CEO Craig Davidson said the park was working with police to try and determine what went wrong. The park was closed after the accident and was expected to remain closed today.