Woman falls out of Texas Giant roller coaster and dies
 

Wow....


http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2...er-texas.html/


Update at 9:10 p.m.: Our Tanya Eiserer spoke with Carmen Brown of Arlington, who says she was next in line to ride the Texas Giant behind the woman who fell to her death this evening. She told Tanya she witnessed the woman being strapped into the ride. She was sitting next to her son.

The woman, said Brown, “basically tumbled over and you just see her son [go], ‘Ahhh.’ They didn’t secure her right. One of the employes 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. …

“That could have been me.”

Brown said the woman’s young son was in a seat in front of his mother.

“We heard her screaming,” Brown said. “We were like, ‘Did she just fall?’”

Update at 8:05 p.m.: Six Flags Over Texas spokesperson Sharon Parker just sent a statement that says in full:

We are deeply saddened to share that earlier this evening an adult woman died in the park while on the Texas Giant. Park medical staff and local paramedics responded immediately. Since the safety of our guests and employees is our number one priority, the ride has been closed pending further investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends during this difficult time.

The incident occurred shortly after 6:30 Friday evening. Witnesses, like the one below, say the restraints came undone, and the woman simply vanished off the towering ride. Others say people on the ground directed rescue workers to her location.

On Facebook, a woman who said she was next in line to ride the Texas Giant wrote that “the lady whose seat I was about to get into on the Giant wasn’t there when the red train came back!! Seriously! People in front row screaming when they came back that their mom was gone. We waited about 50 mins & now kids are freaking out.”


According to Six Flags, the ride rises as high as 14 stories and takes a 79-degree drop.

A rollercoaster has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary after falling out of one, that's what gets you.

The worst part about it was the son who just watched his mom fall out and die. Awful.....

Holy **** that sucks
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People were like "with that pacemaker you can't ride rollercoasters" and I was like "no problem." This is why. I don't wish to have my fate decided by a teenager making minimum wage to ensure my seatbelt clicks.

Why couldn't you make sure it was clicked yourself?
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Oh and I forgot to call you a pussy
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WOW This sucks. I went on this last week never again 76mph most of the ride.


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I wonder if she had fell in love with the ride?

I'm a live pussy though.

You're probably the dick monkey that repaired the seat belts. I heard about your quality of workmanship.

In the late 90's i rode Batman at Six Flags st. louis with my kids... never again, more scared they were going to slip out of their harnesses than anything else.

These things are designed by engineers who in many instances have never rode them and operated by part time college kids... if i sound like Scarey Larry, its because i know how stupid people can be.

Give me the Log Flume, where atleast i get cooled off on some ridiculously hot summer day and the worst i might get is a water moccasin bite...

I'll plead the fifth.

Keep my name out of your mouth when discussing this situation in the future please.
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Seems to me the maintenance on that stuff would be so crazy to do properly. It surprises me that you don't see it more often.

At least she still has her feet...






too soon?

That kind of shit is always a fear of mine. It would brutally suck to fall from a coaster. Scary shit. That said, i love riding coasters.

Yet another reason Texas should probably be nuked from orbit.

Odds are that the woman did something while on the ride. Usually, once the investigation is done it comes down to someone doing something really stupid while on the ride.

Also, when I worked at a theme park we had someone who decided it would be fun to jump out of the log flume at the top of the final hill. The pond for the splash is not that deep and they ended up breaking both their legs.

Man I love Rollercoasters. Always went to Cedar Point growing up.

There aren't enough details for our typical puns. This death sucks.

Did you even read the OP? It said the seat lock didn't lock correctly.

Truth... yeah they have trained engineers on site who supposedly check every rail (?hmm) at the beginning of each day, but who's checking on the college sophomore in charge of loading the ride and riding his ass about safety?

I bet a thousand things could go wrong on any given day.

Everyone is just showing some restraint.

Tony Romo's Swing Pass was a bad idea for ride.

Yeah, I rode the Two Face ride at the Six Flags in Maryland back in the day. I was pretty young at the time and always a shy kid. Anyway, the harness was the type that came down from the top with your legs dangling free. I tried to pull the harness down myself but couldn't get it to click all the way. So the guy was walking through pressing everyone's down but didn't even bother to check mine and I watched him give the thumbs up sign to start the ride.

I started freaking out and told my aunt and, in turn, she started freaking out. Luckily the attendant dude that obviously didn't give a **** about his job ran over and pushed my harness down until it clicked as the ride was about to take off.

That ride had so many flips and upside down turns I know for a fact I would have flown out of the seat in no time. I could have died that day...

One time, at Worlds of Fun, I was riding the Detonator (for out of towners - its one of those rides that briskly elevates everyone up a tower; sort of a reverse Tower of Terror). I couldn't get my harness to click. I knew I wasn't secure, and I was trying to get an employee's attention. Normally they check with every single rider, but for some reason the guy didn't check my section of the octagon (or whatever hexagonal shape the Detonator is); four of us weren't confirmed to be safely secured.

So the ride took off and I held down my harness with all of my strength. I wasn't secure. Thank goodness for g-forces, I guess, for helping keep me in my seat instead of flying off to certain death.

LMAO yep, what you have is essentially, some highly distracted camp counselor from "Meatballs" buckling you in for your life... and thats the Big Money show, i dare not imagine how many times i might've died on some local-schmokel carnival attraction...

Just go flying off that big swing 300 feet into some lemonade stand...

They now claim that the drop can be as much as 90 degrees.

I liked that.

You are a bad, bad man.

That's the good thing about Disney World, I suppose. I've never, ever had the them NOT check any of the restraints. They are pretty nazi-ish about it. I know most of their rides are pretty tame, but at least I'm not going to die on them.

Terrible

My dad took my sister on the orient express at WoF when she was younger (my brother and I were too young at the time) and there was a malfunction and my dad had to literally hold her down with his arm the whole ride to prevent her from flying out. He told me his arm hurt for two weeks after that. He informed the workers and park officials afterward. He was scared shitless he tells us.

What a load of bullshit. You don't know that, and it sure doesn't sound like that was the case based on the OP.

Just because you worked at a theme park doesn't mean you have to be a blind apologist for all workers at all theme parks. Some people just suck at their jobs.

Tragic

http://m.toledoblade.com/local/2013/...dar-Point.html

And there was another amusement park ride accident yesterday at Cedar Point. No one died in that one though. Guess the amusement park gods decided to take a break yesterday.

It's well-known that everything is bigger in Texas, so the "Giant" part of the rollercoaster's name is redundant.

Since her restraint only clicked once, that suggests to me that this lady was obese and ended up finding out the hard way that crash diets don't work.

THOSE NO-GOOD SLACKERS!!

Usually that's the case - the kid who got decapitated by the Galaxi at King's Dominion in the 80's had to try really hard to reach his head up to where that low-hanging beam was. Same with the Shockwave stand-up coaster in the 90's (I think), and as far as I know it's still there.

Also also, I just need to link Action Park in New Jersey, because it's awesome to read.

The thing I am most afraid of is not me falling off a ride, but my son. That would be more horrible then just about anything imaginable.

Talk about close calls, holy crap I went to that 6 flags over Texas in the early 80's. That could have been me :eek:

Story has been updated. Hope this helps


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro...man-s-fall.ece



Six Flags Over Texas announced Saturday morning that the Texas Giant roller coaster will remain closed as authorities investigate a woman's fatal plunge from the Texas Giant roller coaster Friday night.

The Arlington amusement park still has released few details beyond reporting that its medical staff and city paramedics had responded immediately. The victim’s name was not released.
Besides keeping the ride closed, Six Flags has canceled a concert by singer and actress Bridgit Mendler that had been scheduled for Saturday night.

Park officials offered their condolences to the woman’s family as investigators began to study the cause of the accident, which occurred after 6:30 p.m. Although the ride was closed, the park remained open through the evening.

Early attention was beginning to focus on witnesses’ reports that the woman’s safety restraint may have come undone.

Carmen Brown of Arlington was waiting in line as the victim was being secured in for the ride. She said she believed that the woman’s son was on the ride with her.
Brown said the woman had expressed concern to a park employee that she was not secured correctly in her seat.

“He was basically nonchalant,” Brown said. “He was, like, ‘As long as you heard it click, you’re fine.’ Hers was the only one that went down once, and she didn’t feel safe. But they let her still get on the ride.”

She said the victim fell out of the ride as it made a sudden maneuver.
“The lady basically tumbled over,” she said. “We heard her screaming. We were, like, ‘Did she just fall?’”

Investigators were interviewing witnesses on the ride, some of whom reported that the woman had been thrown from the roller coaster as it rounded a turn. Arlington police declined to comment on the accident.

Hysterical passengers had to wait to disembark as the train stopped short of the platform.
John and Darlene Putman of Rockwall said they were in line to board the roller coaster as the train in which the woman had been riding returned.

John Putman told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he heard two people screaming, “‘My mom! My mom! Let us out, we need to go get her!’”
Reports from park visitors began spreading rapidly on social media online, drawing worried parents and others to the gates to check on family members.
Joshua Paul Fleak posted on Twitter that he believed that the woman’s restraint had come undone.

“Just witnessed someone fly off of the Texas giant two seats in front of me,” he said. “… Coaster turned and she was gone.”
The Texas Giant opened in 1990 as the world’s tallest wooden roller coaster but was closed in November 2009 to convert it to a steel-and-wood hybrid.
Although the rebuilt ride incorporates some of the original structure, it includes 4,700 feet of new track.

When it reopened in April 2011, the expanded coaster offered a smoother ride and a higher top speed of 65 mph. It features a 79-degree drop and three turns sharper than 90 degrees.
Friday’s accident was the second ride fatality for a guest at the park since it opened in 1961.
In 1999, Valeria Cartwright of West Helena, Ark., drowned when a Roaring Rapids raft capsized. Ten other people were injured in that accident.

In March 2006, passengers on the park’s Texas Tornado ride reported injuries when the ride slowed rapidly and several of its swings collided.

In another amusement park accident Friday, a boat on a thrill ride at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, rolled backward down a hill and flipped over in water when the ride malfunctioned, injuring all seven people on it.

Six Flags Entertainment Corp. emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2010 after the company said it needed to shed $1.8 billion in debt. In April, the company posted record revenue.
Staff writer Robert Wilonsky contributed to this report.

The witness in the video at the link confirms the woman was "heavy"

I have seen ride operators kick people off of rides before because they were overweight and didn't fit properly in restraints.

We went to World's of Fun last Saturday... and if I had read this before going, I'd probably of not taken the kids.

If something happened to my kids while riding a ride, that would have been the most horrific thing to see... or if I flew off and my kids had to see that. Holy shit.

Isn't this why you ride roller-coasters, for the thrill that you are doing something that typically you are not able to do, and could potentially be dangerous?

My wife works with a woman who did a zip-line with her husband a couple months back. She lands on the last platform, and the "kid" was supposed to help un-harness her. Instead, he was talking with someone else, not paying attention and she slides back off the platform, momentum taking her in reverse......at the same time her husband is coming in at full speed. Bam-3 broken vertebra, all because this kid wasn't paying attention.

People are acting like they're not 500x more likely to die in a car than they are on a roller coaster.

We're going there in October. Sounds like fun!

It won't deter me from going on any rides from here on out. Shit like this happens. Millions of people ride these things every year and you probably only read a couple stories a year about something like this happening.

The odds are in your favor.

This. At my age, I'm most likely to die in an automobile accident. Them's the breaks.

Doesn't stop me from driving quite a few miles every week.

I encourage you to drive more.

You're encouraged to take up smoking again.

No problem. You triple your driving (preferably at a high rate of speed the wrong way on a one way street) and I'll smoke a cigarette. Whoever dies first gets the other's sig for a year.

This

Man, this story really threw me for a loop.

Hmmm.....

http://www.dallasnews.com/incoming/2.../esperanza.jpg

LMAO Wow. There is no reason they should have let her on the ride in the first place.

Then the headline of the article would read "Overweight woman kicked off of roller coaster at Six Flags" and there would be all kinds of outrage over that.

The corndog, deep fried pickle, and funnel cake stands will never forget.

Would this qualify as a 'too fat/Omaha' because she was too big to activate the safety mechanisms? Or would this be a 'not too fat/Omaha' because she wasn't fat enough to be wedged into the seat with her own girth?

It's had its ups and downs. But now I think it's back on track.

That had to make a hell of a greasy spot where she hit.

I wonder if she really fell out or if she happened to glance down and spot the funnel cake stand below her...

man, I just keep gravitating towards this thread.

News reports are coming out that the reason the workers didn't double check the harnesses is because they were too busy watching 'Throw momma from the train' on their iphones....

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she would of sued them if they hadn't and now her family is going to sue them because they did.


I bet the ride attendant was a racist and intentionally messed up the harness lock


Trayvon!!!

Too bad this guy wasn't there to save her...

Look kids. This is what it looks like when you type like you talk.

I need to see your green card, please.

He said he needs to see your carta verde.

**** that.

Tell me about it. I used to love the Galaxi when I was a kid.

She's a big girl, crazy about coasters
She's a big girl, she loves her popeyes
She's a big girl, the attendant didn't even click her
She's on the side walk, with a broken heart


She's............FREE...Free falling

Family has hired a lawyer. This probably isnt going to end well for Six Flags.


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro...first-time.ece


For Rosy Esparza, it was her first trip to Six Flags Over Texas.
Her son on his Facebook page described his mother as adventuresome and said she had been having a good time at the park.
The Dallas mother died Friday evening when witnesses say a restraint came loose and she plummeted to the ground from the Texas Giant, a hybrid steel and wooden roller coaster.

Family members of Esparza confirmed her name but said they were not ready to comment further. One family member said an attorney had been retained to represent the family.
But on his Facebook page, her adult son, Amado Esparza, wrote in Spanish: “I’ve never discovered a day as long as this one. It’s very sad that I lost my mom, but I’m happy that I was able to enjoy her to the maximum while she was alive.”

Neighbors in their southeast Oak Cliff neighborhood said Rosy Esparza lived with her husband, Antonio, Amado Esparza and a teenage son. The couple also has at least one daughter.
One neighbor said Antonio Esparza is a preacher.

Maria Padron, one of the family’s neighbors, said Rosy Esparza was very religious and frequently invited people to her home to study the Bible.

“We cooked a lot for each other; anything you can think of we made for one another,” Padron said. “Tamales and rare Mexican espresso was our trade. I’m going to miss those simple days of just hearing her knock on the door.”
Padron said Rosy Esparza was a “woman who lived for her family.”

Alfred Cannon, another neighbor, said he had been talking to Amado outside the family’s home Friday and had asked him to work on a water heater.
He said Amado said he would have to do it later because he was headed to pick his mom up at Six Flags.

Later, he received text messages from Amado about his mother having died at the amusement park.
“Her belt went lose and she flew away,” one of the text messages said.

I was at worlds of fun years ago with my wife and two kids. we were in line for the Detinator (A ride consisting of twin 200-foot towers. Riders blast-off and head straight for the sky at 45 m.p.h.). we're gonna be on the next ride...so we're right up front watching the current riders get buckled in. I watched them pass this girl and not buckle her. she was a teeny bopper looking thing and she seemed somewhat oblivious that she'd been skipped. I mentioned it to my wife. they passed her up a second time and I said something out loud to them.....you didn't get her buckle or something. I was ignored. I said something again and no one responded and then they released the chairs in prep for liftoff. what I mean is the chairs are completely immobile and just before they let them go....they release them and they kind of bob up and down a little...until the REAL release that shoots you into the air. anyways....when they did that first release...after I'd said twice "hey you missed that girls buckle"....I FREAKED OUT! I really thought shit was gonna go down. so I literally scream "her buckle her buckle!!!!!" and this jagoff punk kid looks at me like I'm crazy....and casually walks over and finally buckles her buckle. ROFL that little mother****er! so now everybody is staring at me like I'm insane! I mean....damn....the girl never said a word....I wonder had I said nothing if she too would have remained silent. anyways...it was rather embarrassing...but better than watching her die in front of us....

I'm pretty sure gravity nixed any chance of her flying.

until the ride hits the top of the tower and she flies off....