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The parents of a 25-year-old woman who has been in a coma for more than a month after riding the X2 roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain have spoken publicly for the first time, and they are not holding back.
Naomi Greer-Wilkinson went to the park with her twin brother and younger sister in early July. She got on X2. She lost consciousness shortly after getting off. She was rushed to hospital for emergency brain surgery. Her parents were told to prepare for the worst.
She has not woken up.
She is hooked up to a ventilator and a feeding tube. She has been in a coma for over five weeks. Her mother, Artemis Greer, told CNN it is the cruellest thing a parent can go through.
"This is the hardest thing a human being could go through. This is cruel."
"Naomi should have never ever in a million years even had the option to get on that ride," Greer said. "It's absolutely insane."
Her father, Joshua Wilkinson, directed his anger at the people who kept the ride open despite years of reported injuries and two previous deaths.
"Whoever decided to keep X2 operational last month has a lot to answer for," he said. "It's got to stop."
Both parents have retained attorney Christopher Bulone of Dordick Law Corp in Beverly Hills. The same firm represents Pamela Guillen, 40, who required emergency brain surgery after riding X2 just six days before Greer-Wilkinson.
Greer-Wilkinson boarded X2 with her siblings on a normal day out at the park. The ride features seats that rotate 360 degrees while the train drops 200 feet at speeds approaching 80mph.
She collapsed shortly after the ride ended. A CT scan at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital showed a severe traumatic brain injury. Surgeons operated immediately. She survived the surgery but has not regained consciousness.
She has been in the same hospital for five weeks. Her family visits every day. The ventilator breathes for her. The feeding tube keeps her alive.
Almost nothing, according to both families.
Guillen's daughter Camille Marquez told CNN that the only contact from Six Flags after her mother's brain haemorrhage was an offer of food on the night of the injury. McDonald's, specifically.
After that, nothing. No follow-up call. No representative. No acknowledgment.
Six days later, the same ride put another woman in the same hospital with the same injury. The ride was finally closed on July 12, a week after the first incident.
Six Flags has said the ride 'remains closed at this time'. The company has not answered questions about why it stayed open between the two injuries, why it stayed open for years despite documented complaints, or what it plans to do next.
An expert witness retained by the family of Christopher Hawley, a 22-year-old who died after riding X2 in June 2022, reviewed internal Six Flags records and found at least 70 complaints involving head and neck injuries from X2 riders in the three years before Hawley's death alone.
Seventy complaints. Three years. One ride.
Hawley's family sued Six Flags for negligence. KTLA confirmed this week that the wrongful death case has been settled by Six Flags and ride manufacturer S&S Worldwide. The terms are undisclosed.
Professor Lyndia Wu, a mechanical engineering researcher at the University of British Columbia who studies the effects of roller coasters on the brain, told CNN what doctors have been saying privately for years.
"I personally don't think head injury should be an expected risk from going on a roller coaster ride, and there is no reason a ride can't be properly designed to prevent injuries like this."
The ride is closed. Cal/OSHA is investigating. Two families have lawyered up. The Hawley family has settled. Six Flags is silent.
Greer-Wilkinson is still in a coma. Her parents sit beside her every day in a hospital room, waiting for a change that may or may not come, because their daughter went to a theme park with her brother and sister on a summer afternoon and got on a ride that had already hurt dozens of people and killed two.
"It's got to stop," her father said.
