A jury awarded $205 million to the family of a young girl who died on a ride at a Glenwood Springs amusement park in 2021.
The verdict issued Friday was in a lawsuit over the death of 6-year-old Wongel Estifanos, who died at the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park on Labor Day weekend in 2021.
Wongel was at the park with her family from Colorado Springs and on a ride called the Haunted Mine Drop. She wasn’t buckled in, and she fell from her seat on the ride that plunged 110 feet into a tunnel.
The lawsuit filed by Estifanos Dagne and Rahel Estifanos said their daughter’s death resulted from the park’s pattern of recklessness and improper training. The lawsuit named Glenwood Caverns Holdings, the park’s parent company; Soaring Eagle, the company that designed the ride; and the two people who operated the ride.
The lawsuit claimed the park had been warned about lax seat-belt checks on the ride in 2018 and 2019, but that park officials failed to tell state investigators about either incident. Wongel was sitting on her seat belt when the ride took off, according to the lawsuit.
Denver-area attorney Dan Caplis, who represents the girl’s parents, said the “very well-reasoned jury verdict” will save lives.
“For four long years, Glenwood Caverns has denied fault for the death of Wongel, who was dropped 10 stories to her death from a ride. Wongel’s parents took this case to trial to prove what really happened and to try to save others,” Caplis said in a statement.
Wongel’s family is grateful to the jury and for the kindness shown by the people of Garfield County, Caplis said. The trial was held in Garfield County District Court in Glenwood Springs.
State investigators found that the system for the ride had been reset to bypass an alarm that would have warned that the girl wasn’t buckled in. The investigation found that Wongel died because of multiple errors by the ride operators and inadequate training. The two ride operators had been hired just weeks before the incident.
The jury found that the defendants owe $82 million in non-economic damages to the Estifanos family and $123 million in punitive damages. Caplis said Glenwood Caverns Holdings and Soaring Eagle are responsible for roughly 98% of the damages and that Caverns Holdings is responsible for the entire $123 million in punitive damages.
“While the jury allocated significant fault on the other defendant, Soaring Eagle, Inc., the size of the total jury verdict award puts the existence of Glenwood Caverns at serious risk,” park spokesperson Kimberly Marcum said in an emailed statement to The Denver Post. “If the jury verdict remains as it is, hundreds of local jobs are in peril.”
Marcum pointed to Soaring Eagle’s failure to perform required engineering and risk analyses as the cause of Wongel’s death.
“Soaring Eagle manufactured the Haunted Mine Drop with a defective restraint system that caused this heartbreaking accident,” Marcum wrote in the statement. “Soaring Eagle certified to Glenwood Caverns that the ride met all applicable standards, but that was not true.”
Glenwood Caverns worked with independent engineers, not Soaring Eagle, to redesign the ride after the incident “to prevent an accident like this from ever occurring again,” Marcum stated.
