The Deadliest Water Slide Ever Built

This is Verrückt, the tallest water slide ever built, and the deadliest. On August 7, 2016, a ten year old boy named Caleb Schwab climbed 264 steps to the top and sat down at the front of a raft that weighed 546 pounds with all three riders aboard. That number sat inside the exact weight range the ride's own test data had flagged as likely to go airborne, two years before that morning. This is the full story of how two men with no engineering degrees built a 17 story machine in a matter of weeks to impress a television network, watched their own test rafts fly off the track, opened the ride anyway, and quietly buried more than a dozen injury reports. It is also the story of why the murder case that followed collapsed without a single day of trial, and why the loophole that made all of it legal is still open today. TIMELINE 0:00 August 7, 2016 0:42 The Promise 2:12 The Machine 4:01 The Warnings 5:34 Two Summers 7:19 August 7 8:41 The Reckoning 10:17 The Collapse 11:41 The Chain of Permissions Sources include the Wyandotte County grand jury indictment, court rulings from February 2019, and contemporaneous reporting from KSHB 41, KMBC 9, KCTV5, FOX4 Kansas City, the Kansas City Star, the Associated Press, ABC News, and NPR. This is a documentary work of journalism and commentary. Archival footage and images are used under fair use for reporting, criticism, and education. #documentary #waterslide #verruckt #truestory