During their visit, Caleb made a decision to go on the Verrückt, known as the tallest waterslide in the world, standing at 168 feet and seven inches.
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Further horrific details have emerged of the circumstances surrounding the death of a ten-year-old boy who was killed after riding on the world’s tallest water slide.
In a statement, the boy’s family identified him as Caleb Schwab.
The 10-year-old son of a state lawmaker died of a neck injury while riding the world’s tallest water slide in Kansas City, Kansas, police said on Monday. Each strap is held in place by long Velcro strips.
However, some people told news outlets that the safety measures weren’t working properly that day.
Kansas state Sen. Greg Smith, an Overland Park Republican, said that although state law doesn’t specifically address waterslides, it’s clear they “would fall into that category”.
Kenneth Conrad told WDAF-TV that he rode the waterslide a year ago with a friend whose shoulder strap came “completely off”. Conrad says he didn’t file a complaint with the park.
ASTM, founded as the American Society of the International Association for Testing and Materials, does provide some industry-wide guidelines for rides and water slides, but Martin claimed that numerous park operators themselves create these rulings, which are voluntary to begin with.
TheStar reported that riders on the Verrückt are supposed to be at least 54 inches tall and 14 years old.
PEOPLE reports that the two women in the boat with Caleb – neither related to him – suffered minor facial injuries.
He said investigators didn’t believe anything criminal happened, so it would be a “civil matter”. We have to understand what’s happened.
The Associated Press published the following first-person account of the ride on July 10, 2014, just before it opened to the public following several delays.
In early tests, rafts carrying sandbags flew off the slide, prompting engineers to tear down half of the ride and reconfigure some angles.
Without specifically mentioning water slides, Kansas statutes describe an “amusement ride” as “any mechanical or electrical device that carries or conveys passengers along, around or over a fixed or restricted route or course or within a defined area for the objective of giving its passengers amusement, pleasure, thrills or excitement”. “And our rides are inspected by an outside party before the season starts”.
Such stationary rides are not generally subject to federal oversight. The state Labor Department, which oversee such attractions in Kansas, did not return calls for comment.
The slide’s 2014 opening was delayed a few times, though the operators did not provide reasons for the delays. Two of those lawsuits involved mishaps on the 3,000-foot King Kaw inner tube ride in man-made rapids, and all of the cases were settled out of court for undisclosed sums.
Caleb Thomas Schwab died on Sunday at the Schlitterbahn waterpark on the Verrückt water slide, which sends riders plunging down 17 stories at up to 50 miles an hour (80 kph).
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“Caleb was an incredible young man”, Clint Sprague, the lead pastor at the family’s LifeMission Church, told the Kansas City Star. German for “insane”, the Verrückt is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest water slide on Earth.
