Schlitterbahn corporation, ex-manager indicted in Verruckt water slide death
Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold
This is nuts. In 2016, a 10-year-old boy got decapitated while riding a Schlitterbahn water slide in Kansas City. A new indictment says the slide's designer had no training to design water slides and that the company was trying to impress TV executives. http://www.kansascity.com/news/article206605804.html
Schlitterbahn corporation, ex-manager indicted in Verruckt water slide death
By Steve Vockrodt, Tony Rizzo, Laura Bauer And Glenn E. Rice
svockrodt@kcstar.com
trizzo@kcstar.com
lbauer@kcstar.com
grice@kcstar.com
March 23, 2018 04:05 PM
Updated 5 hours 14 minutes ago
A grand jury in Wyandotte County on Friday returned an indictment against Schlitterbahn, charging the company and a former operations director with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery and reckless endangerment of a child in the 2016 death of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab on the Verruckt water slide.
A 47-page indictment portrays Schlitterbahn and its two top executives as brazenly pursuing the construction of the world's tallest water slide in a quest to impress producers of a cable television show. ....
The indictment,
brought by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, said Schlitterbahn knew the ride was dangerous.
....
Schwab died on Aug. 7, 2016, when while going down Verruckt his raft went airborne and he was decapitated by a metal hoop that supported a netting system atop the ride. He had been seated in the front. Two women riding with Schwab suffered serious injuries. ... Caleb was the son of Kansas state Rep. Scott Schwab.
....
Instead of vetting Verruckt, an experimental ride, through rigid dynamic and structural engineering, Friday's indictment said that {co-owner Jeff Henry and Verruckt designer John Schooley} both lacked technical expertise to design a properly functioning water slide.
READ MORE:
10 key allegations in the Schlitterbahn indictment
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