A young boy who rode the Verrückt water slide at Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas just days before 10-year-old Caleb Schwab was killed on the ride has revealed that riders were allegedly only strapped in with Velcro restraints, PEOPLE reports.
“I was kind of shocked,” 12-year-old Noah Boganowski said. “I thought there would be belts holding us in but instead, it was just velcro. It was across your chest and across your legs. You would just stick the velcro to the other piece.”
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As previously reported, Schwab was killed while riding the slide on Sunday and was revealed to have suffered a neck injury.
Boganowski’s mother, Liz, said that although workers checked that the raft her son was in weighed between 400 and 550 pounds, no one specifically asked him about his height or age or physically checked that his restraints were fastened correctly.
“When he told me it was velcro I was shocked,” she said. “You’re going 65 miles per hour. How can that possibly hold you in?”
The Kansas City Star reports that the ride has not been inspected by the state since it opened in 2014, and Liz shared that she asked her son about his experience on the ride after hearing about Schwab’s death.
“The first thing he said to me was ‘That could have been me, Mom.’ He said he will never go on that kind of ride again,” she said. “It scares the crap out of you. It really could have been him. That little boy died and Noah is a small 12-year-old so they could have been pretty similar in size, if that had anything to do with it.”
“As a parent when you hear it’s velcro and the history of the ride and how there were safety concerns, it’s scary.”
