Theme Park Thriller, Deadly Brain Bleeds

A theme park ride that thousands of people have screamed through since 2002 is now sitting empty after a string of brain injuries and one death raised hard questions about what riders actually experience on X2.

Story Snapshot

A 2026 CNN investigation found more than a dozen X2 riders over nearly two decades suffered serious injuries, including hospitalizations and one death.
Six Flags Magic Mountain closed the ride on July 12 after two women needed emergency brain surgery within weeks of each other.
Six Flags and manufacturer S&S Worldwide settled a wrongful-death lawsuit over 22-year-old Christopher Hawley just before trial.
A separate lawsuit claims an expert found 70 prior complaints of head and neck injuries in the three years before Hawley died.
Six Flags maintains the ride passes daily inspections and says a “normal” rider following instructions would not suffer a traumatic brain injury.

Two Women Hospitalized Within Weeks Of Each Other

Pam Gillan rode X2 on July 5, 2023, and left with an acute subdural hematoma, brain bleeding severe enough to require emergency surgery. Days later, Naomi Greer Wilkinson collapsed after her own ride on X2. Doctors treating her linked the bleeding to the sharp acceleration and deceleration forces the coaster is famous for delivering. Six Flags shut the ride down that same month and has not reopened it since.

The closure came fast, but the pattern behind it stretches back further than most riders realized. CNN’s investigation, drawing on court records and injury reports, identified more than a dozen X2 riders hurt seriously enough over nearly twenty years to warrant hospital care. One of those riders never went home. Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old college graduate, died after riding the coaster, and a medical examiner attributed his death to blunt head trauma from the ride.

A Wrongful-Death Case Ends In Settlement

Hawley’s family sued Six Flags and ride manufacturer S&S Worldwide in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging he suffered catastrophic brain damage after riding X2. Court filings reported in late August 2026 showed the case ended in a settlement just before it would have gone to trial. Settlements are not admissions of fault, but the timing, right before a jury would have heard the evidence, speaks volumes about how both sides weighed their odds.

An expert hired by the Hawley family reportedly reviewed internal Six Flags records and found at least 70 complaints of head and neck injuries from X2 riders in the three years before Hawley’s death. That number, if accurate, suggests the park had ample warning that something about this ride was hurting people well before the fatal incident and the two hospitalizations that finally forced a shutdown.

Six Flags Pushes Back In A Separate Lawsuit

Not every case has gone unanswered. In a lawsuit filed by Sheila Katerelos, who claims she suffered a traumatic brain injury after riding X2 in February 2020, Six Flags fought back hard. The company’s attorneys argued that expert testing proved her injury was not caused by the ride at all, and the case is now set for a 2027 trial.

Six Flags has also told courts that X2 goes through daily inspections and that a “normal” rider using the ride as instructed would not suffer a traumatic brain injury. That is a real defense, not just corporate spin, and it deserves to be weighed fairly. But it sits uneasily next to a reported 70 prior complaints and a coroner’s finding of blunt head trauma in Hawley’s case.

World-famous Six Flags rollercoaster shut down after being linked to two deaths and serious injuries https://t.co/BsX9bHn3AD pic.twitter.com/YHlfSHxCGM

— LADbible (@ladbible) August 30, 2026

Six Flags has declined to answer most detailed questions from reporters, saying only that the ride “remains closed at this time”. California’s amusement ride oversight has stayed quiet too, leaving families, lawyers, and reporters to piece together the record largely from lawsuits and settlements. That silence does not prove wrongdoing, but it does nothing to reassure parents deciding whether to let their kids near a 200-foot drop.

Amusement parks in California already carry a heightened legal duty of care toward riders, and roller coasters account for a large share of reported ride injuries nationwide. That broader context matters. It means X2’s troubles are not happening in a legal vacuum, but inside a system built to take these claims seriously. Whether X2 reopens, and under what changes, will say a lot about whether that system is working.