A family attending a Missouri amusement park said they had to jump in and hold a screaming girl in her seat because her seatbelt came undone in the middle of a ride on a 200-foot-tall roller coaster.
“We get on the roller coaster and the very first hill, the girl sitting behind my wife just lets out this blood-curdling scream like I’ve never heard before,” Chris Evins told KCTV. “I assumed it was her first time on the ride and then she said my seatbelt came undone.”
Evins said the incident occurred on October 11 on the Mamba rollercoaster at the Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is a season ticket holder.
“I had looped my arm underneath her lap bar, which had a pretty big gap between her and the lap bar,” he added. “So at this point, I’m seeing a huge space, no seatbelt. I looped my arm underneath the lap bar, and I grabbed a hold of her wrist. My wife was pushing down on her legs.”
“72 miles an hour, holding onto somebody,” his wife, Cassie Evins, added in an interview with KMBC. “It’s terrifying.”
On Facebook, Evins shared a mid-ride photo from the Mamba, showing her and her husband holding the screaming girl in her seat.
Six Flags, which operates the park, said the ride was immediately closed after claims of a malfunction and thoroughly inspected before reopening later that evening.
The following day, another guest reported a seatbelt malfunction, KMBC reports.
An October 30 inspection of the ride reportedly revealed some of its seat belts were “worn” and “not locking,” according to documents from the Missouri Division of Fire Safety.
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Six Flags has said the seat belts on the ride were functional, but that 18 units were replaced anyway “out of an abundance of caution.”
The Mamba, a steel coaster built in 1998, reaches a top speed of 75 mph and heights of 205 feet. When it was built, the Mamba was one of the tallest and fastest rollercoasters in the world.
The park reportedly underwent an annual inspection in April, where no issues with any rides were discovered.
