Standing nearly 170 feet tall, Verrückt had been promoted as the world’s tallest waterslide. Riders plunged down its dramatic drops in multi-person rafts, reaching extremely high speeds.
For Caleb and his siblings, it was meant to be another exciting part of a family day at the park.
His father, Scott Schwab, could not have known that a few ordinary words spoken before the ride would stay with him forever.
“Brothers stick together,” Scott told his son.
Caleb answered simply:
“I know, Dad.”
Those were the last words Scott would ever hear his 10-year-old son say.
During the ride, something went catastrophically wrong.
The raft carrying Caleb became airborne and struck part of the ride’s overhead safety structure. Caleb suffered fatal injuries.
The unimaginable tragedy unfolded while members of his family were nearby.
Caleb’s older brother Nathan witnessed what happened.
He then had to do something no child should ever have to do — run back and tell his parents that something terrible had happened to his younger brother.
Caleb’s mother, Michelle, later recalled hearing Nathan screaming that Caleb had “flew from the Verrückt.”
Confusion immediately turned to panic.
Michelle desperately wanted to reach her son, but a man at the scene prevented her from getting closer.
“There was a gentleman who wouldn’t allow me to come close enough to see what was going on,” she later recalled.
He repeatedly told her:
“Trust me, you don’t want to go any further.”
Somewhere inside, Michelle began to understand why.
“I kind of knew in my mind that I shouldn’t see it, that I probably don’t want to see it,” she said.
Scott also described the moments after the accident as almost impossible to process.
A few minutes earlier, his son had been excited about going on a waterslide.
Now Scott found himself repeatedly asking whether Caleb was dead.
The family’s fun day had become an unimaginable nightmare.
And as the shock surrounding Caleb’s death spread, attention soon turned toward Verrückt itself.
Questions emerged about the design, testing, construction, and operation of an attraction that sent riders down one of the most extreme waterslides ever built.
The tragedy ultimately triggered investigations and extensive legal proceedings.
Criminal charges were eventually filed against people connected with the ride, including its designer and one of the water park’s owners. Those criminal charges were later dismissed.
For Caleb’s parents, however, no investigation could change what had happened.
Their 10-year-old son was gone.
Schlitterbahn issued a statement following the tragedy, saying the company had never experienced anything comparable during its decades in the water-park business.
The company described the incident as devastating and said the safety of guests and employees remained its highest priority.
Verrückt never reopened to the public following Caleb’s death.
The attraction was permanently closed and eventually dismantled, bringing an end to the waterslide that had once attracted international attention for its record-breaking height.
Caleb’s death also resulted in civil litigation involving the companies connected with the attraction.
His family ultimately reached settlements reportedly totaling close to $20 million.
But no financial settlement could restore what the Schwab family lost that August afternoon.
Caleb was only 10.
He had gone to the park with his parents and siblings expecting an adventure.
There was no reason for his father to believe their brief conversation before the ride would carry such enormous significance afterward.
That is perhaps what makes Scott’s memory so painful.
There was no elaborate final goodbye.
No opportunity to say everything a parent might wish to say if they knew it was the last time.
There was simply a father reminding his child of something important:
“Brothers stick together.”
And a little boy reassuring him:
“I know, Dad.”
Years after the tragedy, the investigations, legal proceedings, settlements, and dismantling of Verrückt became part of the public record surrounding what happened.
For Caleb’s family, however, the story was never primarily about a record-breaking waterslide.
It was about a son.
A brother.
A 10-year-old boy who should have returned home from the water park with stories to tell.
And for his father, it was about two simple words that no one could have known would become Caleb’s last message to him:
“I know, Dad.”