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No charges filed after 6-year-old’s death at Glenwood Caverns amusement park

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- No charges are being filed after a 6-year-old girl's death last year at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, according to the 9th Judicial District Attorney's Office.

Last September, Wongel Estifanos of Colorado Springs was visiting the amusement park with her family and went on the Haunted Mine Drop ride. Estifanos fell to her death, and investigators found that she wasn't properly buckled in her seat.

The district attorney's office made the announcement Tuesday, saying no criminal charges are being filed against anyone because there wasn't a "reasonable likelihood of success at trial."

Our partners at 9News got a statement from the family's attorney, Dan Caplis, saying, "The parents are shocked and outraged by the decision."

Estifanos' family released the following statement Wednesday:

Once again our daughter’s life has been treated as cheap and meaningless. First by the amusement park and now by the DA.

We never wanted the people who killed our daughter to go to jail. But for the DA to let them off with nothing says our daughter’s life was worth nothing. Justice should be equal. Our little girl should matter as much as a big corporation.

What a terrible message to send. That in Glenwood Springs someone can recklessly kill a child and not even get a ticket. The DA tells us there wasn’t even a drug test done of the operators after they killed our daughter. Why not?

The DA tells us he knows the killing of Wongel was a “gross deviation from the standard of care”, but that he can’t prove which of the operators did it. That doesn’t make sense to us.

We want the full truth. We want justice for our daughter. We want to protect others. The criminal system failed our daughter. We will now go to civil court and prove it on our own.

A state investigation said the deadly accident resulted from "multiple operator errors," including lack of procedures, inadequate training, more than one operator taking responsibility of a ride during a ride cycle, and the restraint system involved.

The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the amusement park.

The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment's (CDLE) Division of Oil and Public Safety found that one of the ride operators didn't remove the seatbelt before Estifanos sat in it, and the belts remained locked on the seat. When Estifanos got into the seat, she sat on top of the buckled seatbelt and put the tail of the seatbelt across her lap. Operator 1 didn't notice Estifanos was only holding the seatbelt and wasn't fastened in.

Read a recap of what led to Estifanos' death at this link.

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