Reports on local nightly news don’t get much more disturbing, saddening or graphic. There, positioned next to his KOMO 4 news van parked in front of the Tacoma Dome on Friday night, was Joel Moreno, breaking in at the end of an otherwise insipid newscast with a chilling report.



The Feld Motor Sports promoted “Monster Jam” was in Tacoma, and according to Moreno the show had taken a horrifying turn. A small child, believed to be a boy and believed to be 5 or 6 years old, had been struck by a piece of debris from one of the monster trucks. The details were sketchy, but the picture painted was vivid. Moreno said one observer told him the injured boy’s father stood up in the moments after his son was struck and said “My kid is dead. My kid is dead.”



At the time, Moreno could neither confirm nor deny those reports. All he knew was two people — including one small boy — had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries sustained at the Monster Jam, which had sold out shows scheduled at the Tacoma Dome throughout the weekend.



By Saturday morning it was official. Sebastian Hizey, a 6-year-old kindergartner from Graham Elementary School was dead. What Sebastian’s father would later describe in a statement to KIRO-TV as a “Frisbee” sized piece of metal had flown from the monster truck “Natural High” and ripped into Sebastian’s skull — creating one hell of a grizzly scene in the tight seats of the Tacoma Dome and robbing Sebastian of all the potential his young life held.



It’s an event that can only be described as tragic.



The response by Feld Motor Sports — and even the City of Tacoma — can only be described as tragically insensitive and tasteless.



Sebastian Hizey was dead. His head had been demolished by an inexplicably flung chunk of Monster Truck. Yet the shows would go on. Roughly 15 hours after Sebastian was killed in the seats of the Tacoma Dome, there were new monster truck fans — fans not forever scarred by the war like scenes those in attendance had witnessed the night before — sitting in the same bleachers Sebastian and his father had occupied.



It didn’t have to be like this. It shouldn’t have been like this.



The rest of the weekend’s Monster Jam events, two Saturday and one Sunday, should have been cancelled. There was no reason that passes the test of good taste for the shows to have gone on.



“I can’t believe the shows weren’t cancelled,” said one Tacoman, with whom I discussed the situation at a local coffee shop. Wherever I turned, that seemed to be the sentiment I heard — and it’s a sentiment I share.



Since Sebastian’s death, Feld Motor Sports has offered only an official statement on the accident, providing the coldly crafted and obligatory “we are deeply saddened by this tragedy” for journalists to cut and paste at will. Though the Weekly Volcano was unable to reach Feld for comment, it is assumed the promoter, after learning of Sebastian’s death, wanted the Saturday and Sunday shows to go on. Two reasons point to this conclusion — the most circumstantial being the large number of tickets already sold, and the most damning being the fact that the shows did, in fact, go on.



However, the City of Tacoma owns the Tacoma Dome, meaning they had a role in the decisions that were made. According to City of Tacoma spokesman Rob McNair-Huff, on Saturday morning after the accident, City of Tacoma officials led by Deputy City Manager Rey Arellano (who was serving as acting City Manager at the time in place of Eric Anderson) met with officials from the Tacoma Dome and officials from Feld Motor Sports. After discussing the situation, coming up with some extra safety precautions, and reaching the conclusion that the public would not be put in danger — Saturday and Sunday Monster Jam events were allowed to continue.



“After that discussion, the city decided that the steps that were taken (to ensure public safety at Saturday and Sunday events) were sufficient,” said McNair-Huff, who in a separate answer said it would have been within the city’s authority to cancel the events.

“The overriding concern in making the decision Saturday was to ensure public safety.”

To state the obvious, what happened to Sebastian at the Tacoma Dome last Friday was horrendous on so many levels. It makes even the cold curl in pain, envisioning what it must have been like — for the family, for those who saw the blood. It was a freak accident, and freak accidents typically have no good explanation. That’s just one of the things that makes this tragedy so hard to come to terms with.



But one thing that’s certain is the shows didn’t need to go on. Because assloads of tickets had been sold isn’t a good enough reason. Because public safety had been ensured isn’t either. I know many of the people who work for the City of Tacoma, and I know they’re good people. This rant isn’t intended to throw them under a bus. They’re not evil, and they didn’t cause this. But when tragedy struck, Tacoma made an inexplicable decision — a decision that should leave us looking for answers.



Tacoma let the shows go on, and thus we all let the shows go on. It was in very poor taste. When a little boy dies at the hands of a Monster Truck, the Monster Jam should stop — at least for the weekend.