Advertisement

Teenage girl dies after falling out of roller coaster

 
Published July 2, 1995|Updated Oct. 4, 2005

A 14-year-old girl riding a roller coaster fell to her death Friday, unnoticed by most of the other passengers on the ride.

A friend said the ride's safety restraints had come loose on a sharp turn at the top of a hill. Amusement park officials, however, said all restraints were in place at the beginning and the end of the ride, and that a lap bar could only be unlocked with a tool.

Ryan Bielby of Kansas City died late Friday while riding the Timber Wolf roller coaster at Worlds of Fun amusement park.

"Going by what some of her friends said, it appears they had just crested a hill and the car itself was making a sharp turn," police Sgt. Jim Keane said Saturday.

The highest point on the 2{-minute ride is 100 feet, but it was unclear at what point the girl fell.

A girl riding with Ryan told police that as the train crested the top of the hill, the lap bar and the seat belt came undone.

Bodies found in Va. rivers

RICHMOND, Va. _ The body of a 3-year-old girl snatched from her grandparents five days ago by a roiling stream was pulled Saturday from the swollen Shenandoah River in Virginia.

Rescuers also found a 64-year-old woman swept into a river by a mudslide, bringing the death toll to eight in more than a week of flooding from days of rain.

President Clinton on Saturday declared three counties and two towns disaster areas, making residents eligible for federal assistance.

Killer executed in Okla.

McALESTER, Okla. _ A drifter who killed three members of a family on an interstate highway was executed by injection early Saturday.

Roger Dale Stafford died at 12:30 a.m. He had been on death row 15{ years.

"I'd like to tell the world that you're seeing an innocent man murdered," he said in a final statement. "Truth and justice, they said truth would set you free but it didn't me. I've got nothing to lose by telling a lie. Somewhere, somehow, some place, somebody please exonerate me and give me the peace of giving my name back."

Stafford, 43, also was convicted of gunning down six employees of an Oklahoma City steakhouse inside a meat locker.

Hacker plea bargains

RALEIGH, N.C. _ A hacker with a history of breaking into some of the nation's most protected computer systems has agreed to a plea bargain that could get him only eight months in jail, his attorney said Saturday.

Kevin Mitnick was arrested Feb. 15 after he allegedly broke into a San Francisco-area computer network and read private E-mail and other files, and cracked the tightly guarded system of computer security specialist Tsutomu Shimomura.

Shimomura, a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, put his own vacation on hold and helped federal agents track his intruder through cyberspace.

Prosecutors said Mitnick commandeered cellular phone circuits to raid corporate computer systems and steal information, including thousands of credit card numbers.

Cargo ships collide off La.

NEW ORLEANS _ Two cargo ships collided in the Gulf of Mexico early Saturday and created a 15-mile fuel slick as they drifted, locked together, in an area studded with petroleum rigs.

The Coast Guard did not want to pull the ships apart because one of them, the Enif, could sink, said Petty Officer Tyler Johnson. "It appears as if one of the ships is holding the other up," he said. "Our biggest concern is that the wreckage might drift into some of the oil platforms." Tugs were brought in to stop the drift.

The Greek-flagged 750-foot Alexia apparently rammed the Enif, out of Singapore, on its port side. The Alexia was empty, while the 514-foot Enif was loaded with 1,500 tons of steel.