THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Early Summer 2018 39 TheCoastalBend.com News reports quoted witnesses as saying that they heard two loud booms after the raft left the slide path, and that the boy’s body could be seen sliding down the second half of the ride. Lifeguards rushed frantically to Caleb, but there was no at- tempt to revive him. The two sisters riding in Raft B with Caleb suffered serious facial injuries but reporting on the cause of their injuries is somewhat contradictory. It seems to have been assumed, though never specifically reported, that the women’s injuries were caused by their own collision with overhead netting and/or a support hoop. However, physics and engineering professors interviewed about their analysis of what went wrong, have settled on weight distribution on the three-person raft as a major contributing factor. Caleb, weighing 73 pounds, was riding in the front seat. One of the two sisters who weighed 197 pounds was in the center seat, and the second sister, weighing 275 pounds, was placed in the rear seat. This severe imbalance left the front of the raft particularly vulnerable to the embedded engineering flaw of the second hill, and the resulting tendency for rafts to lift up and go airborne. The gruesome reality that these physics explain, along with a detailed description of the incident in at least one independent news report, is that the sisters’ facial injuries, which included a broken jaw, were caused by being struck with the boy’s severed head and limbs of his falling body. As difficult as it is to report such painfully gruesome details of a child’s death, it is necessary in order to fully convey the horror allegedly brought upon by the criminal negligence of Jeff Henry, John Schooley, Tyler Miles, and the companies that participated and allowed it to happen, i.e. those who profited directly from the publicity and increased ticket sales that came with Verrückt. Negligence, including incompetence, plus the willful disregard for safety stan- dards, plus poor maintenance practices, and even when you add the foreseeability of disaster, will you rarely get to murder charges, even if the victim is the son of an elected state official. There must be more. There must be an expectation of death that was clear in the minds of the defendants—and if the Wyandotte County, Kansas, grand jury indictment is to be believed—death was expected on Verrückt. ThePolicyofCover-Up W ell before the sun set on Schlitterbahn Kansas City, local police detectives, along with investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and special agents from the Kansas Attorney General’s office, had descended on the park to secure the Verrückt accident scene, a potential crime scene, and to start to put together the story of what happened to Caleb Schwab, and why. Police executed two search warrants requiring Schlitterbahn to surrender all records regarding injuries, complaints of injuries and maintenance procedures for Verrückt. On that day, the park’s general manager, Tyler Miles, appeared to cooper- ate with police, turning over “some documents,” according to the indictment. Three days later, on August 10, Miles was interviewed by attorneys representing Schlit- terbahn and confirmed that he knew about first aid reports involving Verrückt rid- ers, but two days after that he told a different story to Kansas City, Kansas, Police Detective Jason Sutton: Det. Sutton: “Have you been aware of any complaints regarding Verrückt the ride in the last season? This season, this summer?” Miles: “I have not, sir.” Det. Sutton: Would complaints be typically reported to you in “a written or verbal form?” Miles: “It would definitely come in a verbal form, sir.” Miles declined to mention the existence of thousands of written “Ops Daily Re- ports,” which was the standard system in place to communicate all issues at the park to Miles from head lifeguards and supervisors—those issues included mainte- nance problems, guest incidents, injuries, and basically, anything out of the ordi- Top-Left: Caleb Schwab with his father, Kansas State Rep. Scott Schwab; Upper-Right: Henry with former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback; Mid- Left:Verrückt rider whoseVelcro restraint detached; Mid-Right: 3-person raft at top of ride; Lower: Henry in a promo photo withVerrückt.