Four of the acrobats seriously injured last month when an apparatus broke while suspending them 40 feet in the air by their hair spoke for the first time on Tuesday, saying they are planning a lawsuit and are coming to terms with the idea their lives might never be the same, according to The Associated Press.
Svitlana Balanchieva, 22, one of eight performers badly hurt in the May 4 accident in Providence, Rhode Island, said she missed performing and is still plagued by the accident, the AP reported.
"We have nightmares about this," she said at a during a news conference at Boston hospital where she is recovering, according to the AP. Balanchieva was joined by three other injured acrobats from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
"We always liked it to entertain families and mostly small kids," said Balanchieva, the AP reported.
"We took great joy in making others happy," said Viktoria Medeiros, another injured performer also recuperating at the hospital, according to the AP.
"That will no longer come to be," said Medeiros, seated in a wheelchair with her arm bandaged, the AP reported. "Always it will make us sad to know that we will never go back to do what we want to do, what we love to do."
Balanchieva said another performer who had intended to speak could not do so because of surgery, the AP reported.
Balanchieva is among seven performers who have retained the Chicago law firm Clifford Law Offices to represent them in the case, but the women have not taken any legal action yet, according to the AP.
The women were being suspended by their hair from a chandelier-like rigging when the single steel clamp that held it altogether failed during a Sunday daytime performance at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence last month, the AP reported.
