The co-owner of that insane water park ride has now been arrested over child's death

We recently reported on an indictment handed down by a Kansas City grand jury last week, accusing the owners and operators of a nearby water park of building a blatantly dangerous ride on a whim, failing to adequately maintain it, and then attempting to cover the whole thing up after a child was killed while riding it. The 20-count indictment of Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeffrey Henry, his long-time friend (and reportedly unqualified ride designer) John Schooley, and park manager Tyler Miles puts together a fairly damning argument against the three men, up-to-and-including a charge of involuntary manslaughter for the death of a 10-year-old boy who rode the park’s Verrückt water raft ride in 2016. Now, authorities have acted on those charges, with police in Texas arresting Henry for his alleged part in the child’s death.

In Henry’s own words, Verrückt—once the world’s tallest water slide—was built largely as an effort to get his park on TV; the two-hilled raft ride suffered from rushed design and construction as Henry and his team struggled to meet an arbitrary deadline to get it on a Travel Channel show about “extreme” water rides. The indictment repeatedly accused Henry, Schooley, and Miles of ignoring the fact that the ride’s second hill frequently sent rafts airborne, as it did on August 7, 2016, causing a 10-year-old boy to die when he was launched into safety bars arranged above the track. (The park’s operators initially considered putting an age limit on Verrückt, but eventually decided to rescind them, slapping stickers over the restrictions on previously-printed signage.)