Featured Image Credit: Family Handout/ABC News
Topics: News, US News, Documentaries
Niamh Shackleton
A documentary on the death of Caleb Schwab looked into what may have contributed to the 10-year-old's tragic death.
In 2016, Caleb and his family visited Kansas-based resort Schlitterbahn Waterpark, but what was supposed to be fun family day out ended in tragedy.
Caleb went on the waterpark's famous 'Verrückt' ride, which was helmed as the world's tallest water slide at the time, standing at a whopping 169 feet tall.
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The ride opened in 2014 and quickly became a hugely popular attraction because of its record-breaking heights.
After climbing over 200 steps to get to the top, riders would climb aboard water rafts and plummet down the huge slide - with people reportedly hitting speeds of 70mph.
But Caleb never made it off the slide and ended up being decapitated on his way down.
It's believed that the young boy ended up being thrown from the raft towards the netting surrounding the slide - which had put there for safety purposes - and made contact with a metal pole, which killed him instantly.
In the years that followed, filmmaker Nathan Truesdell looked into the 10-year-old's tragic death and produced a short documentary on it.
He used news and promotional footage to depict the ill-conceived project and its tragic fallout.
Speaking about some of the things he learnt during his research, Truesdell told The Atlantic: "There wasn't a lot of science or ride engineering involved in the testing and design.
"They were sending sandbags down and basically hoping that they didn't fly off of the slide. The netting that ultimately ended up killing the child was added to prevent the rafts from flying off of the slide completely."
Backing his claims, court documents obtained by him and the news outlet revealed that a team of experts who inspected the ride after Caleb's death and found there to be 'physical evidence that indicated that other rafts had gone airborne and collided with the overhead hoops and netting before the fatality'.
Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry and senior designer John Schooley had been facing criminal charges in relation to Caleb's death, but they were later dismissed as a result of inadmissible evidence.
Operations manager Tyler Miles, who had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, also had his charges discarded.
While no one was prosecuted in relation to Caleb's death, Schlitterbahn Waterpark ended up closing its doors forever in September 2018 following the 10-year-old's passing and a string of other incidents at the park.