Witnesses described heartbreaking scene after tragic moment boy was decapitated on ‘world’s tallest water slide’
After a 10-year-old boy died when he was decapitated at a water park, witnesses described the horrific scenes they'd seen.
Caleb Schwab had been visiting the Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City on 7 August, 2016 with his family when he'd gone on the 'world's tallest water slide'.
Known as the Verrückt, Germany for 'crazy' or 'insane', the slide had riders sit on a raft and plummet down an almost vertical drop and reaching speeds of around 70mph, before they surged up another incline before coming back down again at the end.
Schwab's brother Nathan had already ridden the water slide and was waiting for his brother at the bottom when tragedy struck.
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Nathan started screaming that his brother 'flew from Verrückt' and a crowd of people warned the parents that they didn't want to get closer and see what had happened.
Caleb's raft had become airborne and he had struck a metal hoop that was holding up netting intended to keep people from flying out Verrückt, decapitating him.
Two other people on the raft suffered a broken jaw and a face fracture.
In the aftermath of the disaster, other witnesses told CNN what they'd seen, having previously ridden on Verrückt themselves earlier that say.
"When I heard a noise that didn’t sound like it was supposed to come from that kind of ride, that’s when I turned around," Jess Sanford recounted of the tragedy.
"I didn’t understand what was going on so I only saw Caleb sliding down the last half of the slide, and then I saw the blood.
"They realized that he was dead, so I don’t think they tried to revive him."
Fellow witness Melanie Gocke said that she'd been on the ride earlier and found that the velcro seatbelts on the water slide weren't very secure and she'd managed to wriggle out of them without much difficulty.
Sanford agreed that those on the ride weren't very secure, saying: "You’d think for something that’s supposed to be known for being the tallest slide in the world they’d have a little bit more secure straps than Velcro."
An investigation into Caleb Schwab's death found that the water slide contained serious design flaws and hadn't been tested properly.
A documentary into the 10-year-old's death also found that during testing they were 'sending sandbags down and basically hoping that they didn't fly off of the slide'.
The water slide never reopened after Caleb's death, while the waterpark continued operating for another couple of years before failing to reopen in 2019, with the entire place having since been torn down.
Topics: US News, Theme Park
Joe Harker