A Portland jury Wednesday awarded $550,000 to two teenage girls for their 25 terrifying minutes trapped upside down on Oaks Amusement Park’s AtmosFEAR ride in 2024 — and for their years of psychological and physical trauma afterward.
Jurors voted 10-2 that the Southeast Portland park and the ride’s maker must pay Xitlali Gomez-Salais and Evie Yannotta the money, which was about a quarter of the up to $2 million for which they’d been asking. Each teen was awarded $275,000.
During three days of trial, jurors heard harrowing testimony from Gomez-Salais and Yannotta, who were 13- and 14-year-olds celebrating their eighth-grade graduations from two different Portland-area schools on the day the ride malfunctioned. The teens, now 16, recalled the pain of blood pooling in their heads and faces, struggling to breathe and the fear that the shoulder harnesses bearing all their body weight might suddenly pop open, sending them plunging 100 feet to their deaths.
In all, 28 people were on the AtmosFEAR on the afternoon of June 14, 2024. Nine sued, but seven settled for undisclosed amounts. The teens were the only two to bring their lawsuits to trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Though the two-year statute of limitations has passed for adult riders, more lawsuits could still come from minors who were on the ride.
After Wednesday’s verdict was announced, the parents of Gomez-Salais and Yannotta said their daughters went to trial because the families were still seeking answers, even after two years of litigation and trial.
“We still do not know what caused the ride to so severely malfunction, which is quite scary,” said Amy Yannotta, mother of Evie Yannotta, in a written statement. “They finally added a safety feature to the AtmosFEAR ride to immediately return the ride back to the home position, should it get stuck again. It begs the question why this feature was not available on this ride on June 14, 2024.”
A spokesperson for Oaks Park, Emily MacKay, confirmed that a switch was added after the ride froze — to prevent any possible future incidents from spiraling into minutes-long ordeals.
“While we agree that the ride should not have become stuck, we are grateful that all of the riders are safe and this incident is now resolved,” MacKay said in an email. “Safety is our top priority, and we will continue to work with ride manufacturers and state inspectors to ensure rider safety.”
An attorney for Zamperla, the AtmosFEAR’s Italian manufacturer, didn’t immediately comment after the verdict.
During trial, the park and the manufacturer contended that while the 25 minutes stuck in the inverted position were frightening for the teens, the teens had made strong recoveries.
“They didn’t take an ambulance ride to the hospital, they didn’t go to the ER, they didn’t seek medical attention,” Scott Schauermann told jurors Wednesday during closing arguments. “Thankfully they were able to meet their parents and go home that night.”
But Michael Fuller, an attorney for the teens, told jurors that traumatic incidents that unfold in minutes or even seconds — like 25 minutes trapped on a ride or a few seconds of someone pointing a gun to a person’s face — can have lasting, life-altering impacts.
The teens testified that immediately after being rescued, they suffered bruising around their necks and soreness. The pair also had nightmares or trouble sleeping.
Both also saw therapists. Gomez-Salais said she took medication for months but stopped after it made her feel numb to the world. She also said she now is afraid to enter enclosed spaces, such as elevators and airplanes, where she might become trapped or lose control of her circumstances.
Yannotta, who won national championship titles in Korean martial arts after the AtmosFEAR incident, said shoulder injuries from the ride ultimately caught up to her and she had to give up her dreams of continuing to compete.
The teens testified that after the ride froze, they felt a deeper desperation set in as an employee used the park’s loudspeakers to tell all the other park patrons to leave.
Gomez-Salais and Yannotta said they thought that park employees didn’t want other patrons to see the riders pass out and go “limp” — or drop 100 feet to their deaths if the shoulder harnesses failed.
Dramatic videos from bystanders throughout the park also captured the sheer terror: blood-curdling screams from the riders; a young man who repeatedly yelled that his body was numb and “I can’t feel anything!” and yet another rider who yelled, “Stop the f—--- screaming!”
Fuller, who represented the teens along with attorney Emily Templeton, told jurors that Gomez-Salais and Yannotta consented to getting onto the AtmosFEAR, but they didn’t consent to getting stuck.
“This wasn’t some freak act of God,” Fuller said. “This was corporate negligence.”
Jaime Gomez, father of Gomez-Salais, said he’d hoped the trial would result in a public airing of facts.
“We refused to stay quiet because not everyone can be bought with a settlement to hide the truth,” Gomez said.
Many details of what went wrong, however, weren’t revealed during trial this week after Oaks Park and the AtmosFEAR’s manufacturer admitted last week that one or both of them were at fault. That meant the only question left for jurors to decide was how much money the teens should receive.
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