Georgia amusement park to reopen as scheduled days after roller coaster death

ATLANTA (AP) — Six Flags Over Georgia is set to open its gates Friday for the first time since a man fell to his death from one of the amusement park's towering roller coasters.

Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, a 42-year-old school employee from Atlanta, was thrown from the Goliath coaster on Monday, and authorities are investigating what happened. The park was already scheduled to be closed Tuesday through Thursday and is reopening as scheduled Friday evening, though Goliath is not expected to be running.

Witnesses described seeing Kariem ejected from the coaster, and some people who rode the Goliath before him that day said they had concerns about its restraints.

The Georgia coaster passed its latest annual state inspection in March with no safety violations found, according to an Associated Press review of documents obtained from the Georgia agency that inspects amusement park rides.

Inspections from 2016 to 2021 found a total of 18 safety violations related to the ride that included corrosion on welds, loose handrails in the waiting area and maintenance needed on grout and padding around the ride’s support structure. Inspectors said Six Flags corrected each violation within days. None of the problems appeared to involve the ride's restraints.

At least 11 roller coasters in the U.S. and Canada — including the ride on which Kariem died — have been temporarily closed. They were all manufactured by the same company and equipped with similar restraints.

Online photos and videos of the coasters show each equipped with clamshell restraints, which are mounted in front of each seat on a vertical bar that sits between the rider’s knees. The bar locks the padded restraint into place over the rider’s lap and upper legs.

It’s unclear from the images whether any of those coasters also have seat belts or other secondary restraints. Goliath in Georgia has no such backup restraints.

Bollinger & Mabillard, the company that manufactured Goliath, said in an email it would have no further comment until it had a “better understanding of what transpired” on Monday.

Kariem was thrown from his seat and struck other patrons before landing below the ride. Goliath, one of Six Flags Over Georgia’s headline attractions, towers above the park’s entrance. It opened in 2006 and features a series of hills and turns. It doesn’t take riders upside down, but its first hill rises to 200 feet (61 meters) and it has a top speed of 70 miles per hour (112 kilometers).

This story has been corrected to show all 11 roller coasters shut down in the U.S. and Canada were created by the same manufacturer and have similar restraint systems, instead of nine of the 11 rides.

Associated Press reporter Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.