He Survived Cancer and a Car Fire. Then a Six Flags Ride Took His Life.

A father takes his family to Six Flags Over Georgia for a day out. His son gets on Goliath with him. Then something happens that nobody on that ride should ever have to see. On Monday, October 12, 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem died after being ejected from the roller coaster. That's confirmed by Cobb County police. What caused him to come out of the seat still isn't.

The story gets even harder to process when you find out who Kariem was and what he'd already survived: cancer, serious COVID-19 illness, and a car fire with his daughter only weeks before his death. His friends describe a fighter. His school remembers a beloved educator. I don't want his whole life reduced to somebody's viral amusement-park nightmare.

A family outing that ended in tragedy

Cobb County Police say officers working at the park responded at approximately 3:58 p.m. Monday. They found Kariem beneath the ride, unresponsive and not breathing. Preliminary interviews with witnesses and employees indicate he was ejected and struck other patrons before falling beneath the attraction. Investigators have not announced why he was ejected.

WSB-TV reported four other people were injured and transported to a hospital. Other reporting and witness accounts describe Kariem riding with his son while his wife and daughter were elsewhere in the park. Those family-position details come from witness and media accounts, not the police statement.

Imagine getting in line with your father because you both want a little excitement, then having the day go completely sideways. That's a memory a child should never have to carry. We're not publishing the disturbing pictures or trying to turn what happened to this family into a spectacle.

A man who kept making it through

A family friend, Elicia Day, told WSB-TV that Kariem was a cancer survivor, survived a difficult case of COVID-19, and had recently escaped a car fire with his daughter. Separate family reporting describes two battles with cancer. These accounts come from people who knew him; they're not details that police independently investigated.

Think about surviving all of that. The kind of medical struggles that turn your whole life upside down, the fear of a fire with your own child inside, the relief of getting through it together. Then one afternoon at an amusement park takes you away from the people you fought so hard to stay here for.

It's hard not to be angry about how unfair that feels. But I also don't want the story to be only a list of the terrible things he went through. He had a life between those headlines.

More than a headline: teacher, mentor, IT manager

Kariem spent more than 12 years at Wesley International Academy, an Atlanta public charter school. He served as a technology teacher, robotics coach and, most recently, IT manager, according to Atlanta News First. His work helped students and teachers make technology part of their education.

Atlanta Public Schools called him a cherished member of its community. The school described a colleague whose dedication to students and commitment to the campus were obvious to the people who worked with him.

That's who this man was before his name started trending. A father. A school professional. A mentor. Somebody who showed up day after day and made himself useful to the people around him.

This man deserves to be remembered for the life he lived, not reduced to the moment he died.6ix / 6ixtv

Six Flags has closed similar rides. What are investigators checking?

Six Flags temporarily closed nine other similar roller coasters across six parks in North America as a precaution, according to the Associated Press. The company says it is cooperating with authorities. The manufacturer, Bolliger & Mabillard, is also examining the incident.

Goliath stands roughly 200 feet tall and can reach speeds up to 70 mph. Like other major hypercoasters, it uses lap-bar restraints. That fact alone does not tell us what happened to Kariem. The crucial unanswered question is why a guest came out of his seat in the first place.

Was there a problem with a restraint, with ride operations, or something else? Was it identified in the day's inspections? We do not have those answers. Georgia safety officials and Cobb County investigators are examining the circumstances; nobody should declare a specific cause just because a viral post says so.

My take: don't let the viral clips erase the family

I get why everybody's asking about the restraints. I want to know too. When you put your kid on a ride, you're trusting the people responsible for it. That's not a small thing. Nobody buys a ticket expecting to be thrown out of a seat.

But I won't call the company negligent, blame an employee, or blame Kariem without findings to back it up. Accountability isn't the same as guessing. Show us what the investigators discover. Show us what the inspections say. And if something went wrong, say what will change.

And we can do all of that without sharing gruesome pictures of somebody's final moments. His family has reportedly asked people to stop spreading those images. They deserve some dignity while they grieve.

I keep coming back to the fact that this man beat cancer, went through COVID, got his daughter out of a car fire, and still had a school community that spoke about him with that much love. That's the part I want people to remember. This was somebody's whole world.

Rest in peace, Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem. His family deserves answers, and every family that climbs onto a ride deserves to know what measures protect them.

Video, source reporting and the original investigation

Reporting note, October 13, 2026: Details from family friends and witnesses are attributed. The reason Kariem was ejected has not been determined publicly. This article features only non-graphic archival and family-supplied imagery, clearly identified by source.