Six Flags temporarily closed nine roller coasters across six amusement parks on Tuesday after one person died and several others were injured in an incident involving a coaster in Georgia.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the park said they closed attractions similar to the roller coaster involved in the incident at Six Flags Over Georgia “out of an abundance of caution”.<\/p>\n
Officials did not confirm how the person died, nor how the others were injured or their conditions after the incident about 24km northwest of Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Detectives with the Cobb County Police Department’s major crimes unit are investigating.<\/p>\n
A Six Flags spokesperson said the park and local authorities responded immediately and that they are fully cooperating with local authorities as they investigate.<\/p>\n
“We are deeply saddened by the guest incident at our park today,” the spokesperson said, adding that they are providing support to the guests and team members impacted.<\/p>\n
Authorities and Six Flags did not identify the roller coaster. However, local TV stations showed video of passengers being evacuated from the Goliath coaster.<\/p>\n
The roller coaster, which was opened in 2006, reaches top speeds of about 113km\/h and heights of 61m, the park’s website reports. During about 3 1\/2 minutes, riders “navigate through razor-sharp turns and soar over colossal hills”, according to the website.<\/p>\n
“I cannot imagine the horror the patrons and employees witnessed today, and my heart aches for the family who lost a loved one,” Lisa Cupid, Cobb County Board of Commissioners chairwoman, said in a statement. She added that next of kin have been notified.<\/p>\n
The amusement park is a major part of the county’s tourism and brings in visitors from across the Southeast, Cupid said.<\/p>\n
“We are all grappling with how something so devastating could happen at a place that has given generations of families such happy memories,” she said.<\/p>\n
This death would be at least the seventh at the Georgia park, including one in 2006 in which a man had a likely heart attack on the Goliath coaster, according to the Doan Law Firm, which focuses on amusement park accidents.<\/p>\n
It also comes less than two weeks after Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Southern California, announced that it is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster<\/a> amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury<\/a> caused by the ride. The park had settled one wrongful-death lawsuit from the family of a 22-year-old man who died after riding the coaster in 2022.<\/p>\n Last year, a 32-year-old man died after riding a high-speed roller coaster at the Universal Epic Universe theme park in Florida. He died from blunt impact injuries and his death was ruled accidental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six Flags temporarily closed nine roller coasters across six amusement parks on Tuesday after one person died and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-629209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}