40 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Early Summer 2018 TheCoastalBend.com nary. When the existence of the Ops Dailies was discovered some six months after Caleb’s death, they revealed dozens of issues concerning Verrückt, from minor to se- rious injuries, to maintenance problems and alerts from staff, to equipment failures including failed restraints and, yes, airborne rafts ascending the ride’s second peak. Miles was forced to admit that he rounded up all the Ops Daily Reports in No- vember 2016 and drove them from Kansas City to Schlitterbahn’s corporate head- quarters in New Braunfels, as a matter of “company policy,” which seems to indicate that he was ordered to do so by Jeff Henry. The records revealed eleven serious rider injuries on Verrückt prior to Caleb’s death on August 7, 2016—one in 2014, five in 2015, and five that season including two the week of the accident. A number of injuries were caused by the combined factors of a failed brake system at the end of the ride, as rafts empty into the run-off pool, and the flimsy nature of the rafts themselves compared to the speed and physi- cal intensity of Verrückt. Riders suffered broken toes, head and neck injuries, and slipped spinal disks as a result of the braking problems, which became so serious the day before Caleb’s death that a maintenance supervisor warned that Verrückt should be closed until it was fixed. Miles ignored the warning and the ride opened as usual. The exact failures that led to Caleb’s death—seating restraints coming undone and rafts going airborne—occurred in other incidents, including on June 16, 2015, when 20-year-old Brittany Hawkins, who had previously worked at the park as a lifeguard, and knew Tyler Miles, suffered head, neck and back injuries. Hawkins’ restraint came undone during the first drop, causing her to be thrown violently side- ways in her seat, followed by the raft going airborne as it went over the crest of the second hill, bringing her face to within inches of the netting and a metal hoop. When the raft bounced back onto the slide path, the impact caused her head to slam into the head rest and, not to miss the full Verrückt near-death bonus experience, Hawkins’ raft slammed into the back of the runoff pool. She was left disoriented, in pain, unable to walk, and had to be carried off the ride to the first aid station by Miles and Hawkins’ husband. According to the indictment, Hawkins told Miles repeatedly that the raft went airborne, and wrote it into her incident report. After signing the report, and while still being treated, Miles left the first aid station with the report, which has never been located and cannot be found in any of the park’s records. This was more than a year before the death of Caleb Schwab. On July 5, 2015, a 15-year-old girl was left with neck injuries and temporarily blind after her raft when airborne, and her head slammed into her headrest when the raft landed back onto the slide. That night, the girl was in excruciating head and neck pain, was vomiting and could not eat, and was diagnosed with a concussion at the emergency room. Her father returned to Schlitterbahn two days later, and an in- cident report was personally completed by Miles—a fact specified in the indictment as evidence that he lied to police when he denied the existence of written incident reports, justifying the felony charge of “Interference of Law Enforcement, Conceal- ing Evidence.” The most egregious example of Schlitterbahn Kansas City’s standing policy to cover-up injurious incidents on Verrückt was the June 16, 2016, case of 46-year-old Norris “J.J.” Groves, who rode the slide with his wife and son. The Groves’ raft went airborne after cresting the second hill, and J.J.’s face and forehead collided with the overhead netting and hoop support, causing abrasions and his eye being swollen shut for the rest of the day. Lifeguards commented that they noticed the raft travel- ing at too high a speed, and Groves told them and a park supervisor that the raft had gone airborne, which was included in the Groves’ signed incident report. According to the Kansas indictment, and based on the testimony of a 17-year- old lifeguard who went to Kansas City Police following Caleb’s death, Tyler Miles intercepted the incident reports the lifeguards had written, destroyed written wit- ness statements, and then forced lifeguards to write new, coached statements that omitted the cause of Mr. Groves’ injuries. In an effort to fully wash the true cause of the Groves incident—the Verrückt raft going airborne on the second hill in the exact manner that caused Caleb Schwab’s death—Miles went so far as to order profession- ally trained medical staff to alter the reports of their observations and treatment of J.J. Groves’ injuries. This was just less than two months prior to Caleb’s death, which makes a strong case that Tyler Miles was acting in accordance with a standing com- pany policy—one that could only come from Jeff Henry—to take whatever extreme measures were required to destroy any record of injuries on Verrückt caused by rafts going airborne. “Man, are they hitting that net up there? That boat flew. That boat looked like it flew.” —Jeff Henry to John Schooley, observing Verrückt from an elevated platform on the day the ride opened, July 10, 2014. Footage from the XtremeWaterparks series onTravel Channel, some of which made it to broad- cast, showedVerrückt rafts going airborne on the second hill, and flying completely off the ride.