Newly revealed video footage from a Discovery Channel feature on a deadly Kansas waterslide shows people were concerned before a 12-year-old boy died on the ride.
Raw Story obtained several short clips of the Discovery Channel feature made about the slide, called "How To Build The World's Tallest Waterslide," in which people joke about how dangerous the slide is and the need for liability insurance. The segment only aired once before the fatal accident.
The men who built a water slide that decapitated a 12-year-old Kansas boy are now facing murder charges. The victim, 12-year-old Caleb Thomas Schwab, is the son of Republican state representative Scott Schwab, an advocate of tort reform who collected a $20 million settlement, the largest in state history.
Scwab died on a slide called Verruckt, which dropped 168 feet at the Shlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kansas. The ride was both designed and built by the park's management, Jeff Henry and John Schooley. According to the indictment, the men had no engineering background and kept the slide going despite several near-misses that preceded the decapitation.
The people interviewed by Discovery Channel, and the narrator, both joked about how dangerous the ride was.
"Congratulations, your world's tallest water slide works perfectly—apply for liability insurance and you'll be ready for business," the narrator says.
"The world's tallest water slide is pretty scary. You're just trusting that this fall from 170 feet is just going to work out," says another commentator. "I don't know—I don't know that I'd do it."
Slidevidiwouldntride from Martin Cizmar on Vimeo.
In another clip, the show discusses the second hill which ultimately proved fatal as riders who had plummeted 168 feet were tossed up into the air, and into a metal bar.
A graphic in the clip even shows riders flying up off the hill, which is how Schwab was killed.
slideflying2 from Martin Cizmar on Vimeo.
As of press time, a trailer for the episode is still up on YouTube from the Discovery Channel's UK branch. In the video, the people interviewed discuss the challenges of the second hill.
"You need the hight of that hill and the angle of that hill to be just right so that the rider's going to get all the way to the top and get over to the other side but not go sailing off," one of the interviewees says. "It's a bump, not a jump."
Sadly, it was a jump.
You can watch that segment below.
