Posted on January 13, 2020. Im telling you, the ride that was built by John Schooley and Jeff Henry is not the same ride that that boy was on the day he died., He added, If I really believed I was responsible for the death of that little boy, Id kill myself right now.. But then how did a water-park company that embodied the American success story, a family business that made it big, go wrong? It never really came together for me, the expert said. Speed is 100% required. He said, Its always on my mind: What if Jeffrey got on there?. "We honestly dont know whats happened," Prosapio told the Kansas City Star. The poles holding the structure up were rusted, and the paint was chipping away. She said her flotation tube collided with another tube during the descent sending her flying. In addressing the viral videos of the sandbags flying off the testing of the ride, Henry expressed confidence that the ride was good to go. Authorities have closed the park since the incident occurred. In a January 25, 2019 court hearing, an attorney representing Henry & Sons Construction, Schlitterbahn's general contracting affiliate, argued that the evidence shown to the grand jurors was flimsy and inadmissable because it included clips from a scripted show highlighting the construction of the waterslide, the Kansas City Star reported. The police are working with the park on the investigation. House Speaker Ray Merrick told the Kansas City Star that Schwab's family was 'the center of his world.'. You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. Kansas City Police confirmed Caleb (pictured) had died from a 'fatal neck injury at the end of the ride', The youngster was just ten years old when he was killed in the horrific accident. (Winter Prosapio, Schlitterbahns spokesperson, declined to comment on all of the above due to pending litigation. Even with the slide finally down, a community that once looked to Schlitterbahn as a summer refuge remains shaken and searching for answers of what went wrong. ', '(The boy) looked skinny,' she added. The Verrckt slide at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark is the tallest in the world. The theme park with one of the most gruesome accidents in U.S. History is once again open for business. In plot A373 under a shady tree at Pleasant Valley Cemetery, fresh flowers, a pinwheel, and a worn Kansas City Royals flag waves next to a headstone featuring Caleb Schwabs smiling face. According to the police report, Caleb Schwab died of a neck injury and was decapitated while riding the 168-foot Verruckt water slide. The waters are shallow and lifeguards are seemingly everywhere at the proliferating number of water parks around the U.S. No jail for mum who starved her baby on water only diet, Fire warning issued over kids phone chargers, Baby joy! As the parks proliferate, concern has grown about the risks present even when most of the water is shallower than 3 feet - people who aren't good swimmers, especially young children, mixed with the unexpected hit of waves and falls that can lead to concussions or even drownings. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Those parks attracted about 85 million people in 2015, compared to about 73 million in 2004. State Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican, and his wife, Michele, released a statement asking for privacy as the family grieves. When the raft pushed off, the seventy-three-pound Schwab was in the front seat.Sanford was eating a funnel cake with her back to the slide when she heard a noise, almost as if a ride had derailed. (Baetz and Barnes, the two sisters who rode with Caleb and suffered serious facial injuries, settled with Schlitterbahn for an undisclosed amount in 2017. As a result of the accident, there are many questions surrounding this attractionall designed to determine what happened. She added: We recognize that the Verrckt accident has caused people to question the safety of other attractions; while understandable, we hope the experiences of millions of guests over the past 40 years speaks to our continued commitment to provide fun entertainment in a safe manner.. 13 years later, he kidnapped 31 year old Kala Brown, keeping her chained to a wall inside a shipping container for 65 days. But officials scrapped the age restriction, deeming the height requirement sufficient. He and his wife, Michele, have four sons, Sprague said. The ride used to have a minimum age restriction of 14. In April, EPR Properties, a Kansas real estate investment trust that holds the mortgage on Schlitterbahn Kansas City, warned investors that the criminal indictments might hurt the companys chances of paying back the $174.3 million on its loan. * It's for thrill seekers of the world, people into extreme adventure." *(bold emphasis mine) The netting on Schlitterbahn's Verruckt being removed by crews following on the ride death of 12yo boy. In March 2018, a forty-seven-page indictment from a grand jury in Wyandotte County revealed, among other things, whistle-blower evidence of how Schlitterbahn officials allegedly covered up other safety-related incidents on Verrckt, and concluded that the slides lack of safety standards posed a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death or severe bodily harm. While it isnt unique for amusement parks to get sued for isolated incidents, the magnitude of the Schwab tragedy, and Schlitterbahns decorated profile, made the grand jurys findings of the water parks negligence that much more damning. He called any potential legislative action spurred by Sunday's tragedy premature, saying the investigation of Caleb Schwab's death should be given time to unfold. Jess Stanford and Melanie Gocke were at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kansas, on the same day a ten-year-old boy was killed on the 17-storey ride last week. "These are not the actions of someone who believed the ride to be dangerous. For the amusement-ride thrill seeker, Verrckt was a bucket-list experience without rival. She filed a lawsuit in Wyandotte County District Court. It sounds like either statements could be conjecture.. The canopy at the top of the ride was long gone. In an interview published in July 2018 with Texas Monthly, Henry refused to acknowledge that he could have designed something that would eventually kill Caleb. Henry noticed something. A promotional video for a show about building the slide includes footage of two men riding a raft down a half-size test model and going slightly airborne as it crests the top of the first big hill. There was a very strong majority of legislators from that part of the state who said Schlitterbahn would be responsible for their own safety measures.. The park was tentatively scheduled to reopen Wednesday, but 'Verruckt is closed,' according to the statement. Schlitterbahn's Verruckt waterslide in Kansas City is . Meanwhile, the Kansas Schlitterbahn has been sued three times for negligence since 2014,although none were related to the Verrckt water slide,KCUR reports. Because of how fast you go on that ride, it all kind of happened in a blink.. She turned around to see what was happening. (Miles, the twenty-nine-year-old operations manager, took her incident report, which is now allegedly missing from Schlitterbahns records.). I saw my friends face kind of drop, and thats when I saw it, Sanford said. Republican Senators Form Wingnut Xylophone, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. "There was a woman being treated for some kind of injury on her face and head," witness Kelsey Friedrichsen, 27, told PEOPLE. The Verruckt water slide requires riders to be strapped in with seatbelts and is designed more like a roller coaster, with netting surrounding the slide to prevent rafts from catapulting into the air. 'Since the day he was born, he brought abundant joy to our family and all those he came in contact with,' the statement said. The prosecution and the defense have both rested their case in the Schlitterbahn trial regarding the death of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab in August 2016. Witnesses at the time said he went down the first drop, then flew out and hit the netting that enclosed the ride. Over two years after 10-year-old Caleb Schwab lost his life on the tallest waterslide in the world, the amusement park industry has yet to fully reckon with the tragedy. You feel nauseous driving around it, said Chris Kamler, a forty-six-year-old resident who worked across the highway from the water park when the slide was still standing. This is a designed product for TV, absolutely cannot be anything else. The thought of this is making me sick! The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. A promotional video for a show about building the slide includes footage of two men riding a raft down a half-size test model and going slightly airborne as it crests the top of the first big hill. And so it sounded like you know they were gonna do something about it," Oberhauser said. After a boy died while riding a nearly 170-foot-tall waterslide in Kansas in 2016, state attorneys brought criminal charges against operators and associates of the water park, accusing them of. Local officials, media, and even Kansas governor Sam Brownback came to take part in the first rides. When the group was over the weight limit, Jeffrey was relieved that he had an excuse not to go down Verrckt and hopped out of line. Today Verrckt, the one-time eyesore on Interstate 435 and, ultimately, a sad symbol of hubris, hardship, and a horrific tragedy that could have been avoided, is gone. Take it as you want to because it's from Twitter but witnesses have reported that the harness system was malfunctioning prior to this accident. Courtesy Schwab Family -- A 10-year-old boy who died on a water slide in Kansas City, Kansas, suffered a fatal neck injury, officials said, as a witness recounted the "horrific scene" and the "panic" that erupted in the wake of the incident last Sunday. He said he had to grip the handles using his legs and told park staff what happened once he got down. Other traumatised witnesses said they saw Caleb's family crying as emergency services treated the other two women who were on the raft. Tyler Austin Miles,. August 9, 2016 9:45am. The lifeguard also said that Schlitterbahn had only a select group of more experienced employees present for the slides testing. Today, all archives of the episode and mentions of Verrckt have been scrubbed from the Travel Channels records, and the episode is no longer available on streaming services.