It was the theme park accident that horrified the world, and now legal documents have revealed frightening details of the blunders that allegedly led to the horrific death of Caleb Schwab.
The 10-year-old was decapitated in front of multiple witnesses in 2016 after a raft ride at Kansas City’s Schlitterbahn Waterpark malfunctioned. The co-owner of the theme park, the designer of the ride and the park’s director of operations, as well as the theme park itself and the ride’s builders, have now been charged with multiple offences.
In particular, Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeffrey Henry has been charged with second degree manslaughter, while operations director Tyler Austin Miles faces an involuntary manslaughter charge.
The park had previously described the 10-year-old death as an “unforseeable accident”, but the charges brought by the Kansas attorney general allege that the ride was riddled with flaws that the Schlitterbahn park knew of well in advance and intentionally avoided fixing.
Caleb was riding a waterslide called the Verruckt – with a name meaning ‘crazy’ or ‘wild’ in German, the ride was certified in 2014 by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s tallest of its kind, reportedly with the ability to hit speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (112 kilometres per hour) – when the raft he was in with two women became airborne, causing the boy to hit a metal bar above the ride. Caleb was decapitated and the women sustained severe facial injuries.
Among the allegations in the indictments that were unsealed on Thursday are chilling details of how employees claimed the water park company covered up similar accidents involving the slide, and that experts in ride design subsequently found that the Verruckt’s design “violated nearly all aspects of the longstanding industry safety standards” and complied with “few, if any, of the industry safety standards”.
“Verruckt’s designers and operators knew that Verruckt posed a substantial and justifiable risk of death or severe bodily harm,” the indictment against Miles reads.
Neither Henry nor Schooley had any of the technical expertise required to design such a complex theme park ride, nor any actual technical or engineering credentials at all. As a result, they skipped fundamental steps in the design process, allowing them to build the ride in just seven months, the indictments allege. They were aware, it is alleged, that testing of the new ride showed the rafts became airborne and, remarkably, installed metal bars directly across the area where they knew the airborne rafts passed.
The park also decided at the last minute to have no age restriction on use of the ride, despite there being a required weight in the raft to reduce the risk of it becoming airborne.
In the six months that the ride was operating, multiple riders sustained serious injuries, including concussion, whiplash, bone fractures and lacerations, but Miles, the director of operations, allegedly destroyed records of these injuries that were written by various pool lifeguards, while avoiding doing any repairs that would have stopped the Verruckt operating during the key summer season. This was, it is claimed, despite the braking system breaking completely 10 days before 10-year-old Caleb was killed.
Miles has pleaded not guilty, while Schlitterbahn company itself said it was shocked by the charges. Henry is being held in jail and will make his first court appearance on April 5, according to the Kansas City Star, which said that the company, plus the builders, Henry & Sons Construction, would contest the case. Schooley’s current whereabouts are unknown, the newspaper added, saying that he had been working outside the US when the charges were unsealed.
Meanwhile, Caleb’s father supported the creation of a new law in Kansas that strengthened government oversight of theme park rides. He said he had full faith in Attorney General Derek Smith in dealing with the case.