The West Edmonton Mall Mindbender
Wikimedia CommonsThe Mindbender inside the West Edmonton Mall, still an attraction to this day despite its bloody history.
Once upon a time, The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, was the world’s largest shopping center. It also housed the world’s largest indoor amusement park, which in turn housed what was once the world’s largest indoor triple-loop rollercoaster, the Mindbender.
It was billed as one of the world’s safest rides.
But on June 14, 1986, that claim was proven wrong when one passenger car on the Mindbender, going roughly 60 miles per hour, derailed after striking a pillar. The collision launched the car’s four passengers hurtling towards the ground, killing three of them.
“I think about it every day,” Rodney Chayko told CBC. Chayko was the sole survivor of the infamous crash.
The victims who rode the Mindbender with Chayko that fateful day were David Sager, Tony Mandrusiak, and Cindy Sims. Sager and Mandrusiak were only 24. Cindy only 21.
“David, Tony, and Cindy are dead,” he said. “It changed my life forever. I remember feeling it sway and grabbing onto the handle,” Chayko recalled. “The next thing, I was landing on the ground.”
His lower legs were shattered, his left shoulder crushed. The crash had broken his feet, pelvis, lower back, and cracked every rib on his left side. Doctors couldn’t count all of the fractures he’d sustained. They feared they’d have to amputate his foot.
Instead, they surgically inserted metal plates in hopes his bones would heal. Six months later, he was able to stand in leg braces. He eventually found the strength to move without them.
After the accident, the Mindbender was shut down for just over a year while safety modifications were put in place. An investigation found that flaws in the design and the manufacturing of the ride — done by a now-defunct German company — had caused four bolts to loosen, allowing a wheel assembly to fall off the car.
The Mindbender was decommissioned and scrapped for parts in January 2023.
