Christopher Hawley’s Six Flags brain injury case is set for trial after the 22-year-old San Diego State University graduate collapsed shortly after riding X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain on June 23, 2022. He died the following day, and his family is pursuing a lawsuit over the fatal head trauma.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner ruled the death an accident and listed blunt head trauma as the cause. The report also described the incident as a park ride accident, placing the dispute on what the ride did to Hawley’s body rather than on the fact that he rode it.
Christopher Hawley and X2
Hawley had visited Six Flags Magic Mountain with his younger brother, Alex, and their cousin. Alex said, “It was very rough. It just jerked us. It just jerked us all around,” and later added, “It just like jolted us all the way forward and then our heads just swung all the way back into the end to the head.”
William, his father, said, “The surgeon had said, he likened it to shaken baby syndrome, that the ride hit his heard so hard that it had basically ruptured his brain,” tying the family’s account to the internal injury described after the ride.
Six Flags Magic Mountain lawsuit
The lawsuit targets Six Flags, the manufacturer of X2, and several individual park employees. Timothy Loranger, speaking about the case, said, “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.”
The family’s filing alleges defective ride design and failure to warn the public. That puts the trial on two questions that matter in court: whether the ride was designed safely for passenger use, and whether anyone with responsibility for the attraction should have warned riders before Hawley boarded.
Chatsworth trial date
A jury trial is set to begin on September 8 in Chatsworth. Six Flags said, “The ride remains closed at this time. It has been closed since the evening of July 12th.”
For riders and families, the immediate issue is simple: X2 is still shut while the legal case moves into a jury trial, and the record already includes a fatal head injury, an accident ruling, and a public safety dispute over how the ride was operated and designed.
