Six Flags temporarily shut down nine similar rides across six parks after a 42-year-old Atlanta man fell to his death from the Goliath roller coaster in Georgia, a move the company called caution while the cause remains under investigation.
A man fell from his seat on the Goliath hypercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia on Monday and died, police said, as several other people were injured in the same incident.
CBS News reported that police identified the man as 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem of Atlanta. The park closed Tuesday for a scheduled non-operating day while an investigation continued in Georgia.
Goliath reaches 70 miles per hour and climbs 200 feet. Witnesses said Kariem came up out of his seat during the ride. Root cause has not been established.
Nick Mendenhall had just ridden Goliath with his teenage son minutes earlier. He told reporters what he saw next.
Mendenhall said the man did not stay seated.
"come straight up out of his seat."
He described the scene in plain terms.
"Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion,"
And he added:
"It was just surreal seeing it happen."
Police said several other people were hurt. They did not release a full injury count or medical details in the available account.
Six Flags answered the death with a system-wide pause on comparable rides. A spokesperson said nine attractions across six parks were taken offline.
The company did not name every ride or every park in that announcement. CBS News Philadelphia reported that Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey, was among those closed.
A Six Flags spokesperson put the decision in safety language.
"Out of an abundance of caution, we have temporarily closed similar attractions across our parks,"
The same message stressed priorities.
"The safety of our guests and team members remains one of our highest priorities."
Six Flags said it is “deeply saddened” by the incident and is cooperating fully with authorities. That cooperation does not replace a finished finding on what failed Monday.
The Georgia death landed two weeks after another high-profile move. Six Flags permanently shut down the X2 roller coaster at Magic Mountain in Southern California amid multiple lawsuits alleging serious brain injuries.
The company declined to comment on that pending litigation. The X2 shutdown and the Goliath death are separate matters. Together they put ride safety, maintenance records, and restraint performance under a harsher public light.
Brian Avery, a legal and risk professor at the University of Florida, said the probe will pull ordinary evidence first: video footage, maintenance logs, and statements from witnesses and ride attendants.
Avery framed those pieces as the path to cause.
"All of these are clues to kind of build to the root cause and trying to come to an actual understanding as to why this would have occurred,"
He also argued parks should not run on mismatched rulebooks.
"We need uniformity in our standards and we need an understanding of how each park is operating so that they're operating according to the same book, if you would,"
Avery noted that the odds of a roller-coaster incident are very low. Low odds do not answer what happened to Kariem on Goliath. They do not tell families why restraints, sensors, or procedures did or did not hold.
No absolute calendar date or clock time appears beyond Monday and Tuesday. No agency name beyond “police” is locked in the account. No official finding yet pins the fall on equipment failure, operator error, rider conduct, or another cause.
Six Flags has not published a full list of the nine closed rides or the six parks in the material provided. Injury totals and severity remain vague. Arrests or charges are not reported.
Until investigators finish, the public has a death, a witness account of a rider leaving his seat, a corporate caution shutdown, and a recent permanent closure of another major coaster under lawsuit pressure. That is the verified record. It is enough to demand clear answers and consistent standards, not another round of soft assurances.
Theme parks sell thrills. They still owe guests working restraints, honest maintenance, and rules that mean the same thing in Georgia as they do in New Jersey. A man went up and did not come home. Caution closures are the minimum. Accountability is the point.
