Water Slide Co-Designer Charged with Murder over Child Decapitated on Ride.

Breitbart ^ | April 3,2018 | by NATE CHURCH

[Hojczyk]

72-year-old John Schooley has been charged with second-degree murder in the tragic death of a child on the water slide he co-designed. Schooley was arrested at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, just after returning from China. In addition to murder, Schooley also faces charges of aggravated battery and aggravated endangerment of a child.

A Kansas grand jury has indicted all three men involved in the incident that resulted in the decapitation of Caleb Schwab, son of Kansas State Representative Scott Schwab. The boy’s raft lost control on the 17-foot slide, and he was killed as he hit an overhead loop at high speed.

Charged along with Schooley are co-owner Jeffrey Henry and the private construction company of the park, Henry & Sons Construction Co. Both have been charged with reckless second-degree murder as well as 17 other felonies related to other incidents on the “Varruckt” slide.

But it was Schooley himself who signed off on the ride, claiming it met all of the required American Society for Testing and Materials standards for use. Even then, he allegedly said that “if we actually knew how to do this, and it could be done that easily, it wouldn’t be that spectacular.”

“Not a single engineer was directly involved in Verruckt’s dynamic engineering or slide path design,” according to the indictments. Those same indictments also claim that Henry rushed production of the slide in order to impress executives involved with a Travel Channel television program.

Thus far, the Schwab family has reached a $20 million settlement with the Schlitterbahn water park and companies associated with the slide’s production.

[HiTech RedNeck]

How would that be even possible to engineer beyond a certain point? Some empiricism is unavoidable here. Dummies don’t emulate actual riders. Is fame all they wanted? Maybe it’s all you want. People chose to get on the ride for reasons of their own — accommodating that could be a reason.

IOW — assertion not in evidence.

But yes — such rides ought to be under oversight. Don’t let the accident be in vain. Identify what caused it, and mitigate in that and all such rides. That’s how progress works.

[HiTech RedNeck]

And neither did Schooley.

After it was in operation, and in consideration of the imperfect dummy testing, he then became concerned. But dummies don’t also react like a rider might. This wasn’t for sliding sleeping bodies down. The thing probably WAS designed for an aware rider.

[chris37]

If the ride was designed to kill, was this the only person to have died on it? If so, the design was not as efficient as, say, the guillotine, wouldn’t you agree?

[HiTech RedNeck]

And I’d just be curious — is there some move (however perverse) a rider could choose on the slide that might launch him to such a death?

There was just one death in 2 years — if I’ve finally nailed the stats down — and it was a doozie, not even close to the rest of the 13 accidents.

What if I’m cruising down the highway and slam my car into reverse? That’s not figured into highway safety statistics because no reasonable person would do it. How about a reasonable rider?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Maybe it’s something like, if you purposely make an untypical move, it could hurl you into a wall or bruise you or knock you up.

I’m just wondering why it happened to a politician’s kid. Spirit of Hogg?

[HiTech RedNeck]

I would wonder if someone could actually do real computer simulation (not animation) and determine if there are things a rider can do which would lead to a serious injury or death.

If such a move was the distinguishing reason for the death — what to do? Close it forever? Add more safeguards? Sternly warn riders not to make certain moves (”as to do so could prove fatal”)?

[HiTech RedNeck]

If the accidents could all be tied to riding in a certain unreasonable way —

Then yes. I’d ride it myself.

My SWAG here is — it was unsuitably ridden. I might want to design a kind of remote control dummy to deliberately provoke accidents if possible. It might be easy enough.

[Ciexyz]

Amusement park rides are going to start looking like gentle kiddie rides after the lawyers get done with squeezing the amusement park industry.

[sipow]

When you build a water slide and claim it can kill people, you should expect consequences if it kills people.

When you test a water slide with dummies and the dummies fly off the slide, and you do nothing to change the slide, you should expect consequences.

When a particular raft is known for going airborne and you keep it in circulation you should expect consequences.

Yes. Falling off the stairs could kill someone. That’s why they put rails up to help prevent that from happening. If there were no rails on the staircase and someone fell to their death, you could bet there would be similar charges.

The key issue behind the charge is whether or not this was a predictable outcome. The designer claimed it was. The tests showed it was. The operation of the slide showed it was.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I think it’s a more complex question.

We don’t put dummies on horses to evaluate how dangerous horseback riding is.

Here is my SWAG — the ride is about as innocent as white water rafting if ridden properly, which 99.999% or so riders have done. Again consider what an outlier the sole death case was. This was spectacular, a doozie of a death. No bell curve here. I’d say let’s investigate what kind of MOVE made by the rider could launch him into a wall like that, and then do we have telltale evidence of him alone doing it?

It’s like a gun. If I point it away from myself and shoot, the mishaps will be few. If I stick it to my head and shoot, it’s a different story. I would not want a world in which grossly improper behavior in use brings a ban on a thing.

[HiTech RedNeck]

He wasn’t decapitated ON the ride, but OFF it (a quibble maybe, but I think something similar when I hear of somebody being killed “on a motorcycle” — odds are, the rider was killed after he and the motorcycle parted).

[TexasGator]

You don’t know what you are talking about.

[TexasGator]

“(Verruckt) could hurt me, it could kill me, it is a seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we don’t know about it,” Henry said, according to the indictment. “Every day we learn more. I’ve seen what this one has done to the crash dummies and to the boats we sent down it … It’s complex, it’s fast, it’s mean. If we mess up, it could be the end. I could die going down this ride.”

[sipow]

There is a significant difference between activities such as horseback riding. There is a significantly different legal responsibility for providing safety in the case of an amusement ride.

I don't disagree with your suggesting to investigate the details of what happened in this case. That should certainly be done.

They should also investigate the design and implementation of the ride to see if reasonable attempts to provide safety were made.

The lack of attention to safety and poor design in this case are outliers as well. I don't think every injury or death at an amusement park should be treated criminally. I think that this case is an outlier.

Look at this photo from a test of the slide:

Clearly the possibility of a raft flying off the ride was well known. They did attempt to address this issue by installing safety nets on the ride. But look at the design of the nets:

They put netting supported by metal hoops. Any halfway decent engineer would look at that and immediately see the danger. The netting would stop someone slowly and spread out the force - but if you were to hit the metal hoop, it would concentrate the force where it hit you. In this case it chopped the kid's head off.

Unknown and unforeseeable risks are something that must be assumed in many situations. This risk was neither unknown nor unforeseeable.

[zeugma]

son of Kansas State Representative Scott Schwab.

That explains everything

[TexasGator]

It explains nothing