Coaster Caused Fatal Injuries, Coroner Says

An autopsy of the Fontana woman who died after riding the Goliath roller coaster at Magic Mountain in Valencia determined she suffered hemorrhaging around her brain stem and a ruptured aneurysm of a cerebral artery, coroner’s officials said Sunday.

“This was due to an accident on the ride, due to injuries she sustained,” said Lt. Fred Corral, of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. “It was a not a natural cause of death.”

The aneurysm may have been a preexisting condition, but the roller-coaster ride led to her fatal injuries, he said, adding that toxicology studies would also be conducted.

The victim, Pearl Santos, 28, boarded Goliath on Saturday with a relative shortly after the park opened at 10 a.m. The two were strapped into a two-seat compartment for the ride that reaches speeds of up to 85 mph and lasts less than three minutes.

At the end of the ride, officials said, Santos was unconscious and paramedics were called to the park. Santos was taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

After Saturday’s incident, the ride was shut down, inspected and reopened several hours later.

Magic Mountain officials shut down the ride about 5:30 p.m. Sunday after the coroner’s report was issued.

“Once we started receiving media calls, we notified Cal-OSHA,” Andy Gallardo, spokesman for the amusement park, said Sunday. “They will be out here tomorrow, and they asked us to shut it down.”

Gallardo said Magic Mountain officials had not seen the autopsy report, but they had been told by the coroner that it was “a preexisting aneurysm” that burst while the victim was riding the coaster.

“We are not disputing the coroner’s report. She may have been walking down the street and suffered this burst. It just so happened she walked onto our roller coaster,” said Gallardo.

“Obviously this was a very unfortunate occurrence,” he said. “Our thoughts and our prayers go out to the Santos family.”

Juan Silva, a friend of the family, described Santos as an outgoing woman with dark brown hair and brown eyes who worked in education with children.

“She liked being with her family, especially her younger brother,” Silva said. “She was a good person all around.” At the Santos home, other distraught family members declined to comment.

A new law requires California amusement parks to report any serious injury accidents to the state division of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Under the law, the agency has authority to investigate accidents at the parks, but other final regulations are still being drafted. In the future, the state will be required to inspect new rides before they open.

When Gov. Gray Davis signed the bill into law in October 1999, it ended a 30-year battle to pass such legislation. Amusement park lobbyists squelched at least four previous attempts at government oversight, critics said. The bill passed at a time of public concern after a string of high-profile accidents.

These include an incident on Sept. 22, 2000, in which 4-year-old Brandon Zucker of Canyon Country was left severely brain-damaged after he fell out of the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin at Disneyland, and was trapped beneath the “taxicab” for about 10 minutes before being freed. For some part of that time he was not breathing and did not have a pulse.

In 1999, Disneyland agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit brought by a woman who suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1995 while on the Indiana Jones Adventure ride.

In the last few years, medical researchers have linked a new generation of high-speed roller coasters to neurological injuries that include blood clots, strokes and bleeding in the arteries.

Magic Mountain opened Goliath last year, billing it as the theme park’s biggest and tallest traditional coaster.

Times staff writers Jennifer Mena and Kimi Yoshino contributed to this story.