Jacksonville native YK Osiris has confirmed he’s looking to pay for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy who died in March after falling from a ride at an amusement park in Orlando. He floated the offer last week on Instagram.
While chatting with TMZ at LAX on Tuesday, Osiris revealed he’s in dialogue with the family of Tyre Sampson, who died after falling out of his seat on the FreeFall ride at ICON Park.
“Outside of music, I have a big heart. … I know [Sampson’s family] was waiting on the amusement park to do they thing or whatever, but things gotta happen quicker,” YK said. “So I feel like it was just a devastating thing for the parents, for everybody in his family, so I had to make it happen. Like, somebody have to make it happen and in the celebrity world, we got too much power and we got too much [of] a big platform to not help with things like that.”
Osiris said he would like to attend Sampson’s funeral if the family approves. “I definitely want to be there,” he said.
Late Tuesday on his Instagram Stories, the artist sent out a rest in peace message for Sampson, showing a photo of Tyre and adding, “I’m going out the way for u lil bro.”
Just a few days after Sampson’s death, a purported cousin of Tyre going by Shay Johnson launched a petition to permanently close the ride at ICON Park. Shortly after, the family told police they don’t know Johnson, who was then revealed by authorities to have a different name. Bogus GoFundMe pages were also shut down following the tragic accident.
The family’s attorney, Bob Hilliard, told CBS News that Sampson’s death “is going to be an issue of a lack of supervision and lack of training,” calling it a “straight-up negligence case.” Meanwhile, famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the family of George Floyd, is also working with Sampson’s relatives, KMOV reports.
