Key Takeaways
- Six Flags closed its X2 roller coaster at Magic Mountain after Pamela Guillen and Naomi Greer-Wilkinson suffered severe brain injuries requiring emergency surgery six days apart.
- Three neurosurgeons linked both injuries to a “traumatic rapid acceleration-deceleration event,” raising questions about why X2 kept operating after Guillen’s July 5 hospitalization.
- Records show at least 70 head or neck complaints from 2019 to 2022 and more than a dozen serious injuries or hospitalizations over nearly two decades, while California regulators investigate the July 5 incident.
Six Flags has closed its X2 roller coaster at Magic Mountain after two women suffered severe brain injuries within six days of each other—and new reporting raises questions about why the ride was still carrying passengers after the first woman was rushed into emergency surgery.
A CNN investigation revealed that Pamela Guillen rode X2 on July 5 while visiting the California theme park for her daughter's 16th birthday. After getting off the coaster, Guillen lost consciousness and was taken to a hospital, where doctors discovered an acute subdural hematoma and brain compression. Surgeons had to open her skull to relieve the pressure.
Six days later, with X2 still operating, 25-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson boarded the same ride. She collapsed afterward, underwent emergency brain surgery at the same hospital, and remains hospitalized with an uncertain prognosis.
Doctors who treated both women linked their injuries directly to what happened on X2. Three neurosurgeons concluded that the “severe brain injuries” resulted from a “traumatic rapid acceleration-deceleration event” on the coaster. Guillen, who survived, described how quickly her life changed: “You go in as yourself, and then when you come back, you're a medical emergency.”
Greer-Wilkinson's father said whoever decided X2 should remain open after the first incident “has a lot to answer for.”
“It's got to stop.”
X2 has been closed since July 12, but the two cases have put the coaster's longer safety record under fresh scrutiny. CNN's review of court filings and internal records found more than a dozen serious injuries and hospitalizations connected to the ride over nearly two decades.
Six Flags records also documented at least 70 head or neck injury complaints between 2019 and 2022. Christopher Hawley, 22, died after riding X2 in 2022; a coroner determined his cause of death was blunt head trauma during a park ride accident. Six Flags denied allegations made by Hawley's family, and the wrongful-death case was settled this week.
The attraction is built to be extreme. Riders plunge approximately 200 feet at speeds reaching 76 mph while their seats rotate independently of the track, including through two “raven turns” that transition into steep drops. X2 debuted in 2002 as X and has since become one of Magic Mountain's signature attractions.
Six Flags has previously maintained in court filings that X2 receives daily inspections and that its forces should not cause traumatic brain injuries to a normal rider using the attraction as instructed.
The company did not answer CNN's detailed questions about the latest injuries. A spokesperson separately confirmed that X2 remains closed. California's workplace safety agency has also opened an inspection into the July 5 incident.
The investigation adds to an already rough year for Six Flags Magic Mountain. The park has faced a $20 million racial discrimination lawsuit from a former employee, a May bomb threat that delayed opening, and a $533.7 million reduction in its estimated value amid broader financial problems at Six Flags.
