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Designer of Deadly Schlitterbahn Water Slide Taken into Custody

The designer of Schlitterbahn's "Verruckt" water slide was taken into custody at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Monday night.

 

The water park company's co-owner Jeffrey Henry is accused of rushing the world's tallest waterslide into service and the designer, John Schooley is accused of shoddy planning.

 

Both were recently charged with reckless second-degree murder in the decapitation of a 10-year-old boy on the ride in 2016. Caleb Schwab died on the 17-story ride when the raft he was riding went airborne and hit an overhead loop.

 

Henry & Sons Construction Co., which is described as the private construction company of Schlitterbahn, was also charged with reckless second-degree murder. 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 last week, pending extradition to Kansas.

 

The attorney general's office said Monday night that Schooley was taken into custody at DFW International Airport after arriving on a flight from China.

Schooley will be held in North Texas until an arraignment to Kansas.

 

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 $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."

After Henry's arrest in Texas, Schlitterbahn spokeswoman Winter Prosapio said in an emailed statement: "We as a company and as a family will fight these allegations and have confidence that once the facts are presented it will be clear that what happened on the ride was an unforeseeable accident."

 

According to the indictments, Henry decided in 2012 to build the world's tallest water slide to impress the producers of a Travel Channel show. Henry's desire to "rush the project" and a lack of expertise caused the company to "skip fundamental steps in the design process."

 

The indictment said, "not a single engineer was directly involved in Verruckt's dynamic engineering or slide path design." The indictment said that in 2014, when there were news reports emerging about airborne rafts, a company spokesperson "discredited" them and Henry and his designer began "secretly testing at night to avoid scrutiny."

-Read more NBC Washington

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