Six Flags will install seat belts on the Goliath roller coaster and on other rides in its chain that use similar restraints, following the death of a man who was ejected from the Goliath at Six Flags Over Georgia on 12 October.

The announcement came in a statement issued on Friday by Six Flags President and Chief Executive John Reilly, addressed to guests and passholders, CNN reported on Saturday. Hiru News carried the same announcement in Sinhala on Saturday evening.

The park is in Austell, in the US state of Georgia — not the country of the same name, which some headlines on the story leave ambiguous.

The ride and the restraint

The man who died was Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, a resident of Atlanta and, in his school’s words, a “cherished member” of a public charter school where he worked as an educator. Several other parkgoers were injured, including four minors, police said.

Goliath is a 3.5-minute ride reaching 70 mph and a height of 200 feet. It uses a waist restraint and does not have an over-the-shoulder harness. Adding seat belts is therefore a material change to how riders are held in, not a cosmetic one — which is the substance of Friday’s announcement.

Reilly said the company has engaged independent engineers and ride inspection specialists to review safety procedures across its attractions.

“Safety has always been fundamental to the experience we provide for our guests.”

He added that safety “also depends on the dedicated teams who operate and maintain our attractions every day,” describing a multi-stage operator training programme of classroom instruction, hands-on training and supervised on-the-job experience.

What investigators have said

Preliminary information gathered at the scene from witnesses and employees indicated Kariem had been ejected from the ride, the Cobb County Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit said. He struck other riders before falling beneath the roller coaster, where he was found “unresponsive and not breathing”.

Goliath remains closed pending safety reviews and clearances. Goliath and eight other rides at five further Six Flags parks are also temporarily shut “out of an abundance of caution”; the company says its parks otherwise remain open, with more than 220 roller coasters operating across its properties.

Six Flags Over Georgia itself reopened on 17 October for its annual Halloween Fright Fest, with Goliath closed and no new findings released about the incident.

Not reported

Neither filing gives a reopening date for Goliath, the findings of the engineering review, or any preliminary conclusion on why the restraint did not hold. No cost or timetable is attached to the seat-belt installation, and it is not stated how many rides across the chain use the comparable restraint and will therefore be modified.

A note on the Sinhala rendering. Hiru describes Kariem’s workplace as a “well-known community school” (ප්‍රසිද්ධ ප්‍රජා පාසලක); the precise term is a public charter school. Hiru’s account of the name, the age and the count of four injured children matches CNN’s reporting exactly.