Six Flags Magic Mountain roller coaster 'X2' linked to a dozen serious brain injuries, two deaths
Two women suffered life-threatening injuries in July, the ride remains closed since, but it has a troubling history.
X2, a roller coaster in Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Valencia, California, has been linked to more than a dozen reports of serious injuries and hospitalisations over nearly two decades, according to an investigation by CNN. Some of those riders suffered severe subdural hematomas that resulted in life-altering disabilities or fell into comas, two of them died.
28-year-old single mother Hilda Farias died in 2010, with medical experts at the time suspecting her death was caused by "a brain abnormality that ruptured because of the intensity of the ride". 22-year-old college graduate Christopher Hawley died in 2022. Hawley, who was in good health, suffered brain bleeding after a blunt head trauma and died within hours of riding the coaster.
The roller coaster X first opened in 2002, plunging its manufacturer Arrow Dynamics into bankruptcy, and was redesigned as X2 in 2007. It is a very rare model of a 4th dimension coaster, with seats on the side of the track that rotate 360º freely, often causing you to take near vertical drops facing backwards or head first. It is a very extreme ride and there's only another one like this in the world, the other, called Eejanaika, located in Fuji-Q Highland in Japan.
Two serious incidents with X2 in July
CNN has investigated those and other accounts of riders who severe injuries. Two serious incidents have happened in the span of a week in July: on July 5, 2026, 40-year-old Pamela Guillén hit her head multiple times on the headrest, she was taken to a hospital with a severe subdural hematoma and brain compression, and she awakened two weeks later after surgery, she needs medication to prevent surgery.
Six days later, also in July, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson lost consciousness shortly after riding the same ride and remains in a coma in critical condition since then, her family being told to prepare for the worst. In both cases, Six Flags have not reached the families since offering them food the first night after the accident.
The ride remained open the following day until it closed the evening of July 12, and remains closed since.
Three neurosurgeons that treated the two women in July said to CNN that "the severe brain injuries requiring emergent neurosurgical attention were the result of a traumatic rapid acceleration-deceleration event experienced while on the X2 ride".
Brian Avery, a professor at the University of Florida specialised in ride safety and risk management, said that safety standards by the state of Florida are "a good starting point but do not account for real-world factors such as the movement of a rider's head, where the rider is seated, and whether the rider's head hits the back of the seat".
While those are the most extreme cases, many riders cite head and neck pain or injuries after riding X2. CNN investigation reveals that the park had fielded 70 head and neck injury complaints regarding the ride in the three years before Hawley's accident in 2022. Six Flags managed in court to keep the first aid and medical incident reports under seal, to avoid "sensational media coverage portraying the X2 ride as dangerous, thereby tainting the jury pool."
