Water slide decapitation of Caleb Schwab, 10, leads to murder charges for designer and park owner

A water park company co-owner accused of rushing the world’s tallest water slide into service and a designer accused of shoddy planning were charged Tuesday in the decapitation of a 10-year-old boy on the ride in 2016.

With the latest charges, three men connected with Texas-based Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts and its park in Kansas City, Kansas, have been indicted by a Kansas grand jury, along with the park and the construction company that built the ride. Caleb Schwab died on the 17-storey ride when the raft he was riding went airborne and hit an overhead loop.

The Kansas attorney general’s office said Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeffrey Henry, 62, and designer John Schooley were charged with reckless second-degree murder, along with Henry & Sons Construction Co, which is described as the private construction company of Schlitterbahn. Second-degree murder carries a sentence of 9 years to 41 years in prison.

They also were charged with 17 other felonies, including aggravated battery and aggravated endangerment of a child counts tied to injuries other riders sustained on the giant slide, called Verruckt, which is German for “insane.” The indictment accuses Henry of making a “spur of the moment” decision to build the ride, and that he and Schooley lacked technical or engineering expertise in amusement park rides.

Henry was ordered held in a Texas jail without bond Tuesday, pending extradition to Kansas. The attorney general’s office said Schooley is not in custody. Schooley didn’t have a listed phone number and no one answered the phone at Henry & Sons Construction Co Eric B Terry, who represented the company in an earlier unrelated case, didn’t immediately return a phone or email message.

The same grand jury last week indicted the Kansas City park and Tyler Austin Miles, its former operations manager, on 20 felony charges. The charges include a single count of involuntary manslaughter in Schwab’s death. Miles has been released on US$50,000 bond, according to one of his attorneys, Tricia Bath.

The company has promised to aggressively fight the criminal charges. After Miles and the park were charged, it said it would respond to the allegations in the 47-page indictment “point by point.”