Boy, 10, Dies on World`s Tallest Water Slide
NANCY GRACE, HLN HOST: Breaking news tonight. It is 17 stories tall, higher than the Statue of Liberty. It drops riders at 65 mph. A family afternoon outing turns deadly when a Kansas senator`s 10-year-old little boy goes airborne and dies on the so-called world`s tallest water slide named the Verruckt, German for "crazy." But what went wrong?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Kansas City, Kansas, tragedy on Schlitterbahn Verruckt.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are saddened to share that a young boy died on Verruckt.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: State lawmaker`s son died tragically, riding the world`s tallest water slide in Kansas. Caleb Thomas Schwab was just 10 years old. He was killed while riding the Verruckt, a towering, 17-story water slide at Schlitterbahn Water Park.</s>GRACE: A gorgeous young 30-year-old vanishes while jogging not far from her own home. In a shocking twist, her retired firefighter dad out searching with police, desperately looking for his daughter, finds her body in marshland near the jogging path when (ph) evidence she was both sex assaulted and strangled in broad daylight. This as eerie journal entries seem to predict her own death. As Katrina (sic) laid to rest, tonight, new clues emerge.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter was a force to be reckoned with.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sexual assault and murder of jogger Karina Vetrano.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You will be reckoning with that force as you</s>GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Bombshell tonight. It`s 17 stories tall. It drops riders at 65 mph. It`s taller than the Statue of Liberty. A family afternoon outing turns deadly when a Kansas senator`s 10-year-old little boy goes airborne and dies on the so-called world`s tallest water slide named the Verruckt, German for "crazy." But tonight, what went wrong? Video emerging of that water slide, the Verruckt, with blood on it, a shocking sight for friends and families of this 10-year-old little boy. The family there at the water park with him when this occurs. Out to Nan Yates, news director with WIBW. Nan, what happened?</s>NAN YATES, WIBW RADIO (via telephone): Nancy, that`s the question of the hour. We are searching for answers here in Topeka, Kansas. We know here at the station -- we know Scott Schwab very well and work with him on a regular basis. This has come as, obviously, a shock to the entire community. The -- almost every agency that we have contacted is keeping very tight- lipped about this, but we do know that there is a massive inspection being conducted.</s>GRACE: Well, what I want to find out, Nan Yates from WIBW, is what happened that day. I`m fact-finding.</s>YATES: OK.</s>GRACE: I`m trying to figure out what happened. So the family goes to the water park. I mean, the German translation of Verruckt is "insane" or "crazy." And it is billed as a ride for thrill seekers. There was an age limit on this thing that was 14 years old. That was removed. So I don`t understand how a 10-year-old little boy can just get onto a ride that`s taller than the Statue of Liberty and brings you down at 65 mph. So that day, Nan, what happened?</s>YATES: They -- I`m sorry, Nancy. They had removed the age requirement and instituted a height requirement of 54 inches. Now, whether Caleb Schwab had met that height requirement is unknown right now.</s>GRACE: I`m being joined right now by Kyung Lah, CNN national correspondent. Thank you for being with us. That day -- what I`m trying to get at is what happened that day, the day little Caleb dies on a water slide that`s there in an amusement park. You would think it`s OK for children. I mean, my son is just 8 years old. He`s already as tall as I am. So a height requirement doesn`t necessarily cover all the bases. It`s not a security net, in my opinion. But I`m trying to find out what exactly do we think happened</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We just don`t know. I spoke with the police department today, the Kansas City Police Department. They are the lead agency investigating this. What they have told me is that they are conducting what is -- they`re calling it a death investigation. They`re looking at whether or not criminal charges might apply in this case. They just don`t know yet. As far as those details that you`re getting at, those nitty-gritty details, we just don`t know. From what we have heard, again, it is the height requirement. That is what was in place. We do not know if he actually met that height requirement. But I think what`s really going to apply here, Nancy, is weight. You have to have three people, and the weight has to be 400 to 500 pounds. So that`s really going to be key in this investigation.</s>GRACE: You know what? That makes perfect sense because you want to hold that raft down. Kyle Peltz, on the story, these are the things that I know from our own investigation. I know that the people, the passengers on this -- let`s see video of the ride, please. When you get on the Verruckt, you are strapped in. Now, he, the little boy, wasn`t the only one that was injured. He lost his life, but apparently, an adult, at least one other adult comes out. There`s reported blood on the water slide. That means he didn`t necessarily drown, but we don`t have a COD, cause of death, yet. Did he drown? Was he struck because he came out of the raft? There are reports by eyewitnesses that he went airborne. Hold on. Here`s what an eyewitness says, Kyle.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lady in front of me said that multiple times, she rode the ride today, the Verruckt, and that the front harness did not work any of the times that she rode it.</s>GRACE: So Kyle, I believe the mom was there with other members of the family because witnesses state she was screaming out, That is my boy. That is my boy, trying to figure out what happened. Clearly, the mother is with him, and there`s no way she would have allowed him to get on a ride that appeared to be for adults or teens or was not appropriate for him. I mean, that`s why she was there. She was watching out for him. So what do we know? Were witnesses there that state he went airborne, Kyle?</s>KYLE PELTZ, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER (via telephone): That`s right, Nancy. There were witnesses there. One witness, at least, said they saw the boy fly into the air after the first steep drop of that slide, causing him to hit the netting.</s>GRACE: Hit the netting, but how would that have killed him? I just don`t understand. I`m understanding that he did go airborne, that another adult came out, as well. Does that mean that the strapping mechanism didn`t work? OK, listen to what we dug up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Creator Jeff Henry (ph) tells the Travel Channel that initially, some of those sandbags (ph) didn`t survive the ride`s test run.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tipped over and kill (ph) every sandbag in there.</s>GRACE: That is from ABC News and "Extreme Water Parks" on the Travel Channel -- "Extreme Water Parks." Unleash the lawyers. Joining me, Darryl Cohen from Atlanta, Mindy Smith, defense attorney in Atlanta, as well. So Darryl Cohen, why would you have a ride that means -- Verruckt means "insane," insanity, crazy. One of the ads -- Justin, see if you can pull up that ad for me. The ad is, Are you insane, but you will allow a 10- year-old child on the ride. I mean, when I go somewhere with the children, I`m very careful. But I look at what the safety precautions are, and if it says it`s a height requirement, I would think that there was nothing wrong with it.</s>DARRYL COHEN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It seems to me, Nancy, that number one, insanity is what we live with. It`s what the press wants us to do. It`s what sells rides.</s>GRACE: I don`t even know what you`re saying.</s>COHEN: What I`m saying is if it`s not insane, if it`s boring, the kids are not going to do it. So yes, there`s a height requirement. We don`t know what happened to this young man. We don`t know if this child -- if he fell through. We do know based on eyewitnesses that he took a flight. He took a flight that he shouldn`t have taken, and obviously, we`ve got a problem we don`t know how to fix because we don`t know what it was.</s>GRACE: You know, Mindy Smith, Darryl Cohen`s argument sounds dangerously like, Well, everybody else is doing it. Just because it`s there does not mean that it`s OK.</s>MINDY SMITH, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, I mean, we don`t know -- we don`t have enough information at this time. We don`t know if this child or anyone else riding in the raft...</s>GRACE: Put them up.</s>SMITH: ... if they were...</s>GRACE: Put them up!</s>SMITH: ... disobeying instructions.</s>GRACE: Disobeying instructions!</s>GRACE: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!</s>SMITH: Part of being on these rides is making sure you adhere to the instructions given to you when you get on the ride.</s>GRACE: First of all...</s>SMITH: ... supposed to have your hands up, et cetera -- you`re not supposed to have your hands up out of the ride. You`re not supposed to lift your body up. We don`t know what happened yet. We don`t know exactly what happened with this child.</s>GRACE: OK...</s>SMITH: It`s possible...</s>GRACE: ... I hear you.</s>SMITH: ... that he and other individuals were not following the instructions for the proper use of the ride.</s>GRACE: OK, I`m glad you got that off your chest because there`s no evidence whatsoever that they were not following instructions. And I`d like to just pose this, throw it out to the two of you. Think back. Think back to law school. Remember something called strict liability? It applies to dangerous activities such as circuses that have lions and tigers and bears or explosive materials, fireworks, or dropping a building with dynamite. All of those are strict liability activities, as is a water slide like this. And what that means, Darryl Cohen, as you well know -- you`re a practicing lawyer -- strict liability means it doesn`t matter whether you`re negligent or not, whether the amusement park is negligent or not. This is an inherently dangerous activity. And if somebody gets hurt, much less a 10- year-old little boy dying, it`s on them!</s>COHEN: Well, Nancy, it`s not necessarily on them. It`s caveat emptor, as well, let the buyer beware. The child`s mother should have said, Hey, wait a minute. He looks like he`s too thin. But no, she didn`t do that.</s>GRACE: Why would any...</s>COHEN: Wait a minute, Nancy. What we know right now is...</s>GRACE: ... mother say that he`s too thin?</s>COHEN: ... we don`t know anything. We don`t know anything right now.</s>GRACE: OK, I think we do.</s>COHEN: And we`re jumping and speculating. No, we don`t.</s>GRACE: I think we do know something.</s>GRACE: To Nan...</s>SMITH: I agree with Darryl.</s>GRACE: I`m sure I hear an echo. Nan Yates, isn`t it true that we believe there was only a height requirement?</s>YATES: That`s what we know right now.</s>GRACE: To Kyung Lah joining me, CNN national correspondent. What do you know about the requirements of getting on this ride?</s>LAH: The only thing that we have heard is you do have to be able to climb a large number of steps. There is a staircase, a ladder, if you will, that you have to be able to climb. So you have to have some level of physical fitness, some level of strength to get up there. But once you`re at the top, it is simply the height. That is the only thing that we`ve heard, Nancy.</s>GRACE: This is video from the Schlitterbahn Studios Design Group`s YouTube page. Take a look at this thing. Hold on. Keep it going. Keep -- good Lord in -- it`s making my chest hurt just watching this. And I can just hear him begging mom, Mom, let me ride it. Let me ride it. Come on! So it`s a deep drop. You go up a hill. Then you go down another deep drop. I`m just curious about who else was on that ride and why an adult apparently flew out of the raft, as well. Take a listen to this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Horrible. I have two 12-year-olds with me today and still very emotional. I just saw everyone`s faces as they waited, you know, to see if it was their loved ones that were affected.