Nearly a decade ago, a 10-year-old boy lost his life on what was once the world’s tallest water slide, and it was his older brother who had to break the devastating news to their parents.
On August 7, 2016, the Schwab family visited Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, home to the Verrückt—a towering 51-meter (168-foot) water slide whose name means “crazy” or “insane” in German. Riders would board a raft, plummet down a near-vertical drop, surge over an incline, and then descend to the final pool.
That day, parents Scott and Michelle Schwab took their four sons to the park, telling them to “stick together.” Their two oldest boys, Nathan (12) and Caleb (10), went on Verrückt together, with Nathan sliding down first. He stood at the bottom, waiting for Caleb—only to witness a tragedy unfold before his eyes.
Nathan began screaming, “He flew from Verrückt! He flew from Verrückt!” Michelle recalled in an emotional interview with Good Morning America. As she tried to run to her son, a bystander stopped her, urging her not to go any further.
“He just kept saying, ‘No, trust me, you don’t want to see this,’” she recounted.
Caleb had been violently decapitated when the raft went airborne and struck the metal netting installed above the ride.
Scott, desperate for confirmation, asked someone, “I just need to hear you say it. Is my son dead?” When the answer came, he said everything felt surreal—he couldn’t even remember how he got home that day.
While the water park reopened just three days later, Verrückt never operated again and was demolished in 2018. The park itself shut down the following year and was later torn down for redevelopment.
A 2019 documentary investigating the disaster revealed that safety concerns had been raised even before the ride opened.
“There wasn’t a lot of science or engineering behind it,” said filmmaker Nathan Truesdell in The Water Slide. “They were sending sandbags down and hoping they didn’t fly off. The netting that ultimately killed the child was added to stop rafts from going airborne.”
Caleb’s tragic death led to lawsuits, criminal charges, and discussions on stricter regulations for amusement park safety, per BBC. But for his family, the heartbreak remains.
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