On the day of the accident, Six-year-old Wongel Estifanos spent Labor Day weekend in 2021 with her uncle’s family at the amusement park, Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado. The mountaintop park called itself the only theme park in the country at that elevation. Wongel boarded the Haunted Mine Drop with her uncle, his wife, two of his children, and another relative. The ride was designed to plunge riders 110 feet underground into an old mine shaft.
When the ride stopped at the bottom, Wongel’s uncle turned to see if his niece had enjoyed it. Her seat was empty. He looked down and saw her small body on the ground. She had fallen the full distance during the drop.
The family screamed and struggled to free themselves, desperate to reach her. But the ride’s restraints held them in place. The automated system then pulled them back up the 110-foot shaft while Wongel remained at the bottom. Emergency dispatchers later said they received calls about 20 distraught relatives at the scene.
How Safety Systems Failed
State investigators from Colorado’s Division of Oil and Public Safety spent weeks piecing together what caused the accident that September day at the Amusement park. The findings found that Wongel wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. She was sitting on top of both belts instead of having them secured across her body. She held only the tail end of one belt across her lap.
The ride’s safety system caught the problem, triggering an alarm in the operator’s booth. It then locked the controls to keep the ride from starting. Every safeguard worked exactly as designed, and it should have saved Wongel’s life.
But the two operators working that day had been hired less than two months before the accident. When the warning alarm sounded, they didn’t understand what it meant. They had never been trained on the safety protocols for this specific situation. Instead of checking each rider’s restraints, they reset the system’s safety monitors. This override allowed them to launch the ride with an unrestrained child aboard.
When the ride began its drop, Wongel had nothing holding her in place. She separated from her seat and fell the full height of the shaft. The medical examiner found she suffered multiple fractures, brain injuries, and severe internal and external lacerations.
The Fight for Accountability
The 9th Judicial District Attorney’s Office spent months reviewing the case, but in 2022, prosecutors declined to file criminal charges. They said they couldn’t prove criminal negligence beyond a reasonable doubt. To the Estifanos family, that decision treated their daughter’s death as “cheap and meaningless.”
The family responded by filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Glenwood Caverns Holdings and Soaring Eagle Inc., the Utah company that designed and built the ride. Both companies denied any responsibility for Wongel’s death.
The case went to trial in Garfield County in September 2025, four years after Wongel’s death. Attorney Dan Caplis represented the Estifanos family, centering his argument on the amusement park’s failure to train its employees on mandatory safety rules that could have prevented the accident. He presented evidence that operators were not required to follow basic protocols that might have prevented the tragedy.
Jurors were shown the absence of training documents. They listened as Caplis walked them through the state’s investigation findings. They also heard how the untrained operators faced their first real safety warning and made the wrong choice.
The Verdict and Its Meaning
The jury deliberated for more than 7 hours on September 19, 2025. Then, they awarded the family $205 million, making it one of the largest wrongful death settlements for a single plaintiff in Colorado history.
The jury assigned $82 million for the family’s emotional distress and loss. They added $123 million in punitive damages against Glenwood Caverns for its training failures. Both defendants would split an additional $41 million in general wrongful death damages.
Caplis later explained what drove such a large verdict. The family had one mission since burying their daughter. They wanted to protect other children from suffering the same fate. The amusement park had spent 4 years denying any responsibility for the accident. The parents wanted public acknowledgment of what happened. They wanted changes that would prevent other families from experiencing their nightmare.
Read More: Man Dies on Universal Roller Coaster: Latest Updates and Information
Conflicting Stories
Glenwood Caverns released a statement after the verdict expressing sympathy while shifting blame. They claimed Soaring Eagle had manufactured the ride with a defective restraint system. According to the park, Soaring Eagle had hidden knowledge of two previous ejections from rides using the same restraint design. The company had falsely certified that the ride met all safety standards without performing required engineering analyses.
The park warned that the verdict threatened the survival of a 26-year-old business. They said they had offered the family all available insurance money before the trial. The family had refused every offer for over 4 years. If the verdict stood, hundreds of jobs would vanish from Glenwood Springs, a town of 10,000 residents that relies on the park’s 200,000 annual visitors.
The state’s investigation contradicted this narrative. The Investigators found zero mechanical problems with the ride. Their official report blamed “multiple operator errors” and violations of Colorado’s amusement ride regulations. Every finding pointed to inadequate training, not equipment failure.
The park’s actions after the accident supported the investigators’ conclusions. Glenwood Caverns brought in independent engineers to redesign the ride without Soaring Eagle. They added new safety features and training requirements. The ride reopened in 2023 as Crystal Tower. These changes addressed operational and training problems, not design flaws.
Soaring Eagle no longer exists as a company. Caplis told reporters that collecting damages from a defunct corporation would require additional litigation. The jury had assigned partial fault to a company that couldn’t defend itself or pay its share, leaving Glenwood Caverns responsible for the entire judgment.
The Lasting Change
Wongel Estifanos was a first-grader at Stetson Elementary School in El Paso County. She died because two undertrained employees didn’t understand a safety warning that could have saved her life.
Her parents spent four years refusing settlement offers and pushing for a public trial. They wanted the truth exposed in open court. They wanted other parents to know what happened. Caplis said the verdict would “save a lot of lives” by forcing parks to examine their training programs.
This $205 million accident sends a message to every amusement park operator in America. Safety training is not optional. The verdict makes one thing certain. No ride operator should ever again hear a safety alarm and not know what it means and what to do about it.
Read More: Man Dies in Horrific Accident After Being Thrown Into ‘Boiling’ Manhole