LOS ANGELES (Gray News) – A “perfectly healthy” 22-year-old man died from a brain bleed after riding a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
According to a recent lawsuit filed by his family, Christopher Hawley visited the park in Los Angeles County on June 23, 2022, with his brother and his cousin.
All three rode the X2 steel roller coaster together, which the lawsuit describes as “extremely rough” and “jerked its riders around like rag dolls.”
While getting off the ride, Hawley had to hold onto a handrail for support, said that his head hurt, then collapsed and fell unconscious.
“He just looked very red, just very like, something just wasn’t like right… and then he eventually just collapsed on his way off the ride,” Hawley’s brother told KABC.
His family said Hawley was taken to a Six Flags medical tent and then rushed to a hospital.
The next day, he died.
According to the coroner’s report, Hawley died from head and brain trauma. KTLA reports that a CT scan of Hawley’s head revealed he suffered a “catastrophic right subdural hematoma,” a type of brain bleed, “resulting from the rollercoaster.”
Hawley’s brother told KABC that the coaster came to a sudden halt, which sent their heads forward and then “all the way slammed back really hard.”
Hawley’s family said he was in perfect health and had no pre-existing conditions. They are now suing Six Flags for wrongful death, alleging design defect, failure to warn and negligence.
The family’s lawyer told KABC they are confident they will “be able to show this was not an injury he suffered earlier in the day or some time prior in his life, but happened during the X2 ride.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Six Flags Magic Mountain denied the claims in the lawsuit.
The X2 steel roller coaster includes “360-degree rotating seats and head-first, face down drops” and takes riders 200 feet in the air, according to Magic Mountain’s website.
“Your 360-degree seats extend on wings far off the track. So while you are careening down the rails at 76 miles per hour through an unreal assortment of dives, flips and twists, as well as two ultra-rare ‘raven turns’ — half loops that change their minds midway and become sheer drops—your body will also be flipping around 360-degrees over and over again. Quite simply, you will be spun into another dimension,” Magic Mountain says.
The ride originally opened in 2001 as X and was redesigned in 2008, reopening as X2.
Hawley was a recent graduate of San Diego State University and was just weeks shy of his 23rd birthday.
The trial is set to start Oct. 13.
Six Flags Magic Mountain has been contacted for further comment.
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