Coaster tragedy: Teen was taking shortcut back to park
Keenan High student died after being hit by roller coaster
By CLIF LEBLANC - Staff Writer
“He was a beautiful boy. He was a happy-go-lucky guy,” Asia Ferguson III, whose son died Saturday at Six Flags Over Georgia
SPRINGFIELD — The skies darkened and thundered, and raindrops fell on a pained Asia Ferguson as he gazed toward the cemetery where he buried his father in April and soon will inter his teenage son.
Asia LeeShawn Ferguson IV, 17, died Saturday in a freak amusement park accident in Atlanta when he was struck by a roller coaster he was not riding and was decapitated.
Authorities said the rising senior at Columbia’s Keenan High School was taking a shortcut back into Six Flags Over Georgia after leaving for lunch with other children during a church outing.
Cobb County and park officials said Ferguson and another young man, later identified as the teen’s cousin, at about 2 p.m. scaled two fences where signs warned of a danger zone at Batman the Ride roller coaster.
Police will release no details of the accident until an autopsy is completed today.
During the bus ride back Sunday to this Orangeburg County town where the Fergusons have attended Oakey Spring Missionary Baptist Church for five generations, the father said, “We still don’t know what happened.”
All he could do was lament the gnawing loss.
“He was a beautiful boy,” Asia Ferguson III, a 54-year-old van driver for the Richland County library, said of the elder of his two sons. “He was a happy-go-lucky guy.”
Known by relatives as LeeShawn (pronounced LEE-shawn), the young man sang tenor in the church choir and occasionally played drums. His father is the keyboardist and his mother, Letha, is the secretary at the 137-year-old church.
As do many teenagers, he enjoyed pickup basketball at Greenview Park and video games, his father said.
Other relatives and members of the congregation repeatedly referred to the teen as “a good kid.”
“He was just a very personable young man,” church pastor, the Rev. Kenneth Perkins, said. “You couldn’t meet a better young man.”
Perkins delivered the eulogy in April for the teen’s grandfather, Asia Ferguson Jr. of Columbia.
On Sunday, five fading silk flower arrangements still adorned the burial site in the cemetery across from the church on Fire Tower Road. A heart-shaped wreath, crosses and floral sprays danced in the summer breeze in this rural community where cattle, goats and even donkeys graze by the roadside. Springfield is about 45 minutes southwest of Columbia.
LeeShawn’s is the second death in six years tied to the popular roller coaster, which travels up to 50 mph after climbing the equivalent of 11 stories and takes riders through two corkscrew turns and dangles them beneath a track.
Park worker Samuel Milton Guyton died May 26, 2002, when he was kicked in the head by a teenage girl riding in the front car. Guyton was on a platform in a restricted area.
Six Flags closed the Batman ride Saturday evening. The rest of the park remained open. The ride might reopen today, a park spokeswoman said.
Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce and park spokeswoman Hela Seth said the two youngsters scaled 6-foot fences — one wrought iron that forms the park’s perimeter and the other chain link around the ride.
Signs spaced about 45 feet apart on the perimeter fence warn it is a “restricted area” and for “authorized personnel only.”
A sign on the locked gate to the ride states, “Danger zone” and “Do not enter,” park officials said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family,” said Seth, the Six Flags spokeswoman.
Many people saw the collision and flooded 911 with calls, Pierce said.
“It’s hard to imagine somebody not seeing the signs and jumping two fences,” he said.
Perkins, installed last week as pastor of the Springfield church after transferring from Topeka, Kan., said Sunday the family plans to hire a private detective.
Asked if the Fergusons will file a lawsuit, Perkins — with the teen’s father at his side — said, “We just want to know the facts.”
The church held a private, hourlong prayer service that doubled as a counseling session for the children after the shocking events of the Atlanta trip.
Families filed quietly off a GetaWay Travels bus about 1:40 p.m. Sunday. Some children held what appeared to be prizes won at the park. A girl hugged a large stuffed Pebbles, the daughter in the old television show, “The Flintstones.”
One little girl squealed, “Mommy,” and jumped into the waiting arms of a woman who was at the door of an adjacent church education building.
Congregants arrived to share in the grieving.
They emerged later, singing and clapping to the hymn, “God is Good.”
“God is a wonderful God,” they sang. “He can do anything but fail.”
Except for the minister and Asia Ferguson, none of the people who made the Atlanta trip would discuss the ordeal.
In remarks to media from Columbia, Augusta and Atlanta, the father tried to express the anguish.
“He was a good boy. He did whatever I asked him to do. He loved the church. He loved the Lord.”
He said his wife, a 48-year-old assistant to a Colonial Life insurance vice president, was too despondent to talk publicly.
“She just lost her oldest son,” he said, choking back emotion and draping his arm over the shoulder of Perkins as if for help in uttering the toughest words of his life.
The couples’ other son, Jacolby Jerrod Ferguson, is 13.
The father and the minister said the church takes its young members every summer for a big outing.
Asia Ferguson IV had attended most of them, including the last two to Disney World in Florida and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Perkins said.
The teen was considering college or joining the military, perhaps the Navy or the National Guard, his father said.
He wasn’t sure his son was ready for military service.
Funeral plans are being determined, but the family tentatively has selected Saturday, the minister said.
LeeShawn likely will be laid to rest next to his grandfather, who died the same month his grandson turned 17, Perkins said.
“It’s our faith,” he said, “that keeps us going.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this article.
