After four years, a Colorado jury has awarded $205 million to the family of a six-year-old child who died after she fell from a ride at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park.
Wongel Estifanos was visiting the Western Slope amusement park, known as “America’s only mountaintop theme park,” on Labor Day weekend in 2021 when she fell more than 100 feet from a ride known as the Haunted Mine Drop.
Estifano’s family received $82 million for emotional distress and loss and an additional $123 million in punitive damages.
“It's enormously important to [the family] because this has been their mission since they buried their daughter — to just try to protect other people,” Caplis told CPR News. “And the amusement park had never admitted fault, had denied fault, so [the family’s] mission was to try to protect others.”
The ride was the first of its kind and placed about six people on a bench before plunging the riders underground into an old mine shaft.
A state investigation, a few weeks after the tragic incident, found that Estifanos was not buckled into her seat correctly. Instead, she was seated on both seat belts and “was only holding the tail of one seatbelt across her lap.” According to the investigation, a warning alarm sounded before the ride took off, which notified the operator there was an issue with Estifano’s seat belt. However, the operator did not know how to respond, the report said, so they dispatched the ride.
The 2021 report concluded that the child’s death was caused by “multiple operator errors,” stemming in part from “inadequate training.”
Investigators found no mechanical issues with the ride, and prosecutors declined to file criminal charges, saying they could not meet the legal standard of proving criminal negligence beyond a reasonable doubt. The Haunted Mine Drop has remained permanently closed since the incident and was replaced by a new ride in 2023.
Glenwood Caverns “continued to deny fault,” according to Estifano’s family’s lawyer, Dan Caplis.
Estifano’s family decided to pursue a civil case in 2022.
The Garfield County jury allocated significant fault to both the theme park’s parent company, Glenwood Caverns Holdings, and Soaring Eagle, the company that designed the ride. The jury announced its decision on Friday, Sept. 19, finding the company had failed to disclose previous issues with the ride’s restraint system and falsely claimed it met industry safety standards.
Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park says while their “hearts go out to the family of Wongel Estifanos and everyone affected by the tragic accident that happened on September 5, 2021,” the verdict puts the 26-year-old amusement park's future in jeopardy.
"If the jury verdict remains as it is, hundreds of local jobs are in peril," a spokesperson for Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park said in a statement.
The amusement park employs hundreds of workers during the summer and attracts more than 200,000 visitors each year—providing a major boost to the tourism industry in Glenwood Springs, a town of about 10,000 residents.
CPR's Arlo Perez Esquivel contributed reporting.
