“The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department would like to express our honest condolences to the Schwab Family on the tragic loss of their son Caleb Schwab”.
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Investigators were treating the death of a 10-year-old boy on the world’s tallest waterslide as a “civil matter” rather than a criminal incident, a police spokesman said Monday, as the park and Kansas authorities pressed to sort out what caused the tragedy.
Authorities and family say Caleb died Sunday afternoon while on Verruckt, a 168-foot-tall water slide that has 264 stairs leading to the top.
Emergency responders arrived to find the boy dead in a pool at the end of the ride. Josh also noticed that there were two women with the boy who were apparently not related to him but had minor injuries on their faces.
She said: “I saw his (Caleb’s) brother”.
Since the day he was born he brought abundant joy to our family and all those who he came in contact with.
Caleb’s dad Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican, and his wife, Michele, released a joint statement asking for privacy for them and their surviving three sons. As we try and mend our home with him no longer with us, we are in comfort knowing he believed in his Savior, Jesus, and they are forever together now. “We will see him another day”, the statement added. Its scheduled opening back in 2014 was delayed reportedly due to alarming complications including one that saw water rafts detach from the slide and fly off into the air.
Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry told USA Today that he and senior designer John Schooley had based their calculations for the slide on rollercoasters.
A promotional video for a show about building the slide includes footage of two men riding a raft down a half-size test model and going slightly airborne as it crests the top of the first big hill.
The Kansas park where a state lawmaker’s 10-year-old son died on what’s billed as the world’s largest waterslide says the park is tentatively planning to reopen on Wednesday.
The three were taken to a local trauma centre where they were said to be awake, alert and answering questions. He said that Kansas, along with many other states, do not have a third party group that can inspect these rides other than the state.
The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission had a short meeting Monday to discuss whether state campaign finance laws apply to the effort.
Schlitterbahn spokeswoman Winter Prosapio says the boy died on what the park bills as the world’s largest water slide.
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Ms Prosapio told reporters on Sunday: “We honestly don’t know what’s happened”.
