A California family's wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the X2 rollercoaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain was so violent it killed their 22-year-old son, and the ride has since been linked to yet another unconscious rider.
Christopher Hawley, a recent San Diego State graduate from Garden Grove, California, collapsed shortly after stepping off the X2 rollercoaster on June 23, 2022. His face turned red. He would not wake up. Emergency crews rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he died the following day. He was 22 years old.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death as blunt head trauma, and the coroner's report attributed the fatal injury to a "park ride accident." Now the Hawley family is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages in a wrongful death suit against Six Flags Magic Mountain, with a jury trial set to begin September 8, 2026.
Christopher and his younger brother Alex visited the park together that day in June 2022. Both rode the X2, a steel rollercoaster featuring rotating seats, a 215-foot drop, and speeds reaching 76 miles per hour. What happened on that ride, the family says, ended Christopher's life.
Alex Hawley described the experience to Fox LA:
"It was very rough. It just jerked us. It just jerked us all around. It just jolted us all the way forward and then our heads just swung all the way back into the headrest."
The lawsuit alleges the ride violently jolted to a halt, slamming riders' heads into the headrests. A CT scan at the hospital revealed extensive intracranial hemorrhage, bleeding inside the skull. Christopher never recovered.
William Hawley, Christopher's father, relayed what the treating surgeon told the family:
"The surgeon had said, he likened it to shaken baby syndrome, that the ride hit his head so hard that it had basically ruptured his brain."
That comparison is striking. Shaken baby syndrome involves brain damage caused by violent, rapid back-and-forth motion of the head, the kind of force parents are warned can kill an infant. The surgeon, whose name has not been made public, applied the same framework to what a theme park ride did to a healthy 22-year-old man.
Christopher's mother, Anne Hawley, described the phone call that changed everything:
"I remember him [Alex] saying, 'Mom, Christopher collapsed, and he's not waking up.' We went from a family of four to a family of three in an instant. It's devastating. It is a piece of us that is gone forever."
Christopher's obituary painted the picture of a young man who had everything ahead of him. "He found joy in everything and in everyone around him," it read. "He was a bright light in this world and was always so positive and kind." The obituary described him as selfless, a hard worker, and someone who never complained even when things got tough.
He had just graduated from college. He went to a theme park with his brother. He did not come home.
The Hawley family's attorney, Timothy Loranger, framed the case as a basic question of corporate responsibility. The Daily Mail reported his comments:
"If you're going to operate that and you're going to invite the public to ride as passengers, you have to take every step that you possibly can to ensure that they're going to be safe, that they are not going to suffer an injury that could potentially kill them."
And the X2's track record suggests this was not an isolated event. Attorney Ari Friedman, also involved in the case, told the New York Post directly: "This is not the first time someone has sustained a serious injury as a result of riding X2." The ride has been linked to multiple prior injury lawsuits.
More recently, on July 5, 2026, another rider was found unconscious after riding the X2. Six Flags closed the attraction for more than a month following that incident. The outcome and condition of that rider have not been publicly disclosed.
William Hawley put the family's motivation plainly: "We want to make sure that that ride isn't going to kill somebody else."
The Daily Mail approached Six Flags for comment on the litigation. No response was included in the reporting. The company has not publicly addressed the Hawley family's claims or the broader pattern of injuries tied to the X2 ride.
The jury trial is scheduled to begin on September 8, 2026. The family is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages. Several open questions remain unanswered: the specific court handling the case, whether Six Flags conducted any internal investigation after Christopher's death in 2022, and whether any safety modifications were made to X2 in the four years between his death and the July 2026 incident involving another unconscious rider.
A 22-year-old walked onto a theme park ride and never walked out of the hospital. The coroner said it was blunt head trauma from a park ride. The family says the company that ran the ride has said nothing. A jury will decide the rest, but the silence from Six Flags speaks loudly enough on its own.
