Woman's deadly fall off Six Flags roller coaster probed
Updated 10:38 PM ET
ARLINGTON, Texas A woman who died while riding a roller coaster at a Six Flags amusement park in North Texas fell from the ride, an Arlington police sergeant said Saturday.
Sgt. Christopher Cook told The Associated Press that police believe the woman fell Friday at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, and that there appears to have been no foul play.
Park spokeswoman Sharon Parker confirmed that a woman died while riding the Texas Giant roller coaster — dubbed the tallest steel-hybrid coaster in the world — but did not specify how she was killed.
Some witnesses said the woman who died wasn't properly secured.
"We are committed to determining the cause of this tragic accident and will utilize every resource throughout this process," Parker said in a statement Saturday. "It would be a disservice to the family to speculate regarding what transpired."
Cook, spokesman for the Arlington Police Department, said police, fire and emergency medical services responded to the park around 6:45 p.m. Friday in reference to a woman who had fallen from a train car while riding a roller coaster. He said the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
He said the park and the Texas Department of Insurance, which approves amusement rides and ensures they are inspected, will be involved in further investigating the accident.
Carmen Brown told The Dallas Morning News that she was waiting in line to get on the Texas Giant when the accident happened and witnessed the woman being strapped in.
"She goes up like this. Then when it drops to come down, that's when it (the safety bar) released and she just tumbled," Brown, of Arlington, told the newspaper. "They didn't secure her right. One of the employees from the park — one of the ladies — she asked her to click her more than once, and they were like, `As long you heard it click, you're OK.' Everybody else is like, `Click, click, click.'
"Hers only clicked once. Hers was the only one that went down once, and she didn't feel safe, but they let her still get on the ride," Brown said.
Kanisha Howell told CBS station KTVT in Dallas she was standing in line with her daughter, waiting to ride the roller coaster. They said they were watching it as it reached a peak. "When it got in the air and started coming down, I don't know if she had a seizure or what, but she fell out of the cart and just fell out of the sky. We're leaving now because my daughter, we both cried and were terrified and I didn't want to ride anything else," she said.
Howell said the woman was there with children, and that the ride was immediately shut down after the accident as park goers were quickly moved away from the area. She said emergency responders arrived but it took them awhile to actually locate the victim.
Six Flags said the ride will be closed as the investigation continues, and a concert scheduled for Saturday was canceled.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends during this difficult time," the park's statement said.
The Texas Giant reaches 14 stories high and has a drop of 79 degrees and a bank of 95 degrees. It can carry up to 24 riders. The ride first opened in 1990 as an all-wooden coaster but underwent a $10 million renovation in 2010 to install steel-hybrid rails before reopening in 2011.
Also Friday, an Ohio amusement park's thrill ride malfunctioned when a boat accidentally rolled backward down a hill and flipped over in water, injuring all seven people on it. Operators stopped the Shoot the Rapids water ride after the accident, said officials with Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio.
Six Flags Over Texas opened in 1961 and was the first amusement park in the Six Flags system. It is 17 miles west of downtown Dallas. The park's first fatality happened in 1999. A 28-year-old Arkansas woman drowned and 10 other passengers were injured when a raft-like boat on the Roaring Rapids ride overturned in 2 to 3 feet of water.
There were 1,204 ride-related injuries reported in the United States in 2011 — about 4.3 for every million visitors — according to the National Safety Council's most recent data. Of those, 61 were deemed serious, the March 2013 report said, and roller coasters accounted for 405 injuries.
Fatalities were not listed in the report, which was prepared for Alexandria, Va.-based International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. Also, only 144 of the 383 amusement facilities with rides in the United States responded to the survey.
A 2005 report to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated just over four people died annually on amusement rides from 1987 to 2002. The estimate includes both mobile amusement park rides and fixed-site rides.