Six Flags Over Georgia faces another troubling incident after fatal coaster fall

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Six Flags Over Georgia is facing another tragedy.

“It was kind of shocking. It made us kind of emotional, as well,” said Caleb Sedam and Brandon Casper, who visited the park before their flight home to Indiana.

“You know, we’re kind of with a group of friends at some point, and but we’re still like kind of like looking at each other, realizing like, well, we don’t want to like cry in front of our friends, but like this is, you know, your heart breaks for these people, your heart breaks for the other people on that specific train who who witnessed what happened,” Casper said.

RELATED: 1 killed, several injured in incident at Six Flags Over Georgia

Cobb County police said Monday that one guest died, and several others were injured on the Goliath roller coaster.

“As that kind of started to unfold, the mood probably was it changed a little bit. You know, we started to realize it was more serious. We kind of just got more quiet,” Casper said.

According to the park’s website, Goliath is the park’s largest coaster. The three-and-a-half-minute ride reaches a top speed of 70 mph and an elevation of 200 feet.

Sedam and Casper were in the train car behind the one the man fell from. They said they saw him board the car ahead of theirs. They noted that the ride uses only a lap bar to secure riders, but said they had ridden similar coasters and did not feel unsafe.

“But I will say this definitely makes me question this particular type of safety mechanism if there’s not another one as well,” Casper and Sedam said.

“That when something like this happens, you wonder if something was missed or if you know, like where the missing piece was almost. It makes me question if all of the kind of those checks that I take for granted aren’t happening like you think they are when you just trust a ride and you get on it,” Casper added.

The park has had other frightening incidents. In July, a fallen tree during a storm injured four people. In June, the SkyScreamer swing ride paused for 10 minutes, leaving riders dangling hundreds of feet in the air.

In May 2018, a ride caught fire, injuring park employees and one guest. Casper and Sedam said the latest incident could be a wake-up call to add redundancy to safety measures.

“If that one point of failure ultimately fails, in this case, that one lap bar, I would feel I think more secure if there was another secondary safety system like that lap belt. Do I think that is going to hold me fast for the car? No, but it’s something. It’s something that’s an extra layer between me and injury and death,” Sedam said.

The cause of the incident remains under investigation.