An Atlanta school employee has died after being flung from a ride at the Six Flags park outside the city, and the operator has pulled nine comparable rides in the United States and Canada while investigators work out what went wrong.
The alarm was raised shortly before four on Monday afternoon. According to Cobb County police, officers on duty in the park discovered the 42-year-old, Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, lying motionless under the track. Early accounts from witnesses and staff indicate he left his seat mid-ride, collided with other passengers and then fell. Local television reported that four more people went to hospital.
Neither the police nor the company has named the coaster, yet helicopter footage showed Goliath halted part-way round its course and several people in the queue identified it. Opened in 2006, Goliath is a so-called hypercoaster that climbs about 60 metres and tops 110 km/h, never turns riders upside down and secures them with lap bars only. One bystander said a car came back into the station with its restraint open, but officials have not said whether equipment failed.
Eight of the nine paused coasters were made by the Swiss firm Bolliger & Mabillard, which says it is examining the accident. State regulators, whose ride inspectors sit within the office of Georgia’s insurance commissioner, are running their own inquiry. Goliath will stay shut indefinitely, according to park president Richard Pretlow.
Colleagues at Wesley International Academy knew Kariem as the man who ran its computers, taught technology classes and coached the robotics team, roles he held for over twelve years. Relatives said he had twice beaten cancer, and they asked the public not to circulate footage of his death.
Lawyers at the Doan Law Firm, who keep a database of fairground incidents, put the number of deaths at this park at seven or more over its history. The tragedy also lands just after the company’s California park retired its X2 coaster, which is the subject of brain-injury lawsuits.
