A boy who was decapitated on a water slide is remembered five years on as witness accounts resurface about the mum having to be held back from seeing the horrific scene.
Caleb Schwab, 10, died in front of his family while riding a 168ft-high water slide in Kansas at Schlitterbahn Water Park.
Today is the fifth anniversary of the traumatic death.
Republican lawmaker Scott Schwab's son Caleb died on the Verruckt attraction, which means "insane" in German, and has been certified as the world's tallest water slide by Guinness World Records.
Witnesses at the time said he went down the first drop, then flew out and hit the netting that enclosed the ride.
Caleb was killed when his raft became airborne over the slide's 50-foot hump and collided with a metal bar supporting the safety net. Two women that were also on the ride suffered minor injuries.
Dad Scott previously told Good Morning America of the last time he spoke to Caleb just before he set off for the ride, which has now been torn down.
Mum Michelle told the show about her eldest son's screams of terror after the fatal accident.
She said: "He was screaming: 'He flew from Verruckt! He flew from Verruckt!'"
She added how when she tried to see what had happened to her son, a man stopped her from going any further.
Michelle continued: "There was a gentleman who wouldn't allow me to come close enough to see what was going on and kept saying: 'No, trust me. You don't want to go any further'."
Scott was left in a state of shock.
He asked: "I just need to hear it from you, is my son dead." And he just shook his head, and I said, 'I need to hear it from you, is he dead?
"And he said, "Yes, your son is dead'. It was surreal. I don't even hardly remember driving home."
Shocked theme park visitors were left traumatised after watching Caleb die.
Eyewitness Melanie Gocke had told CNN : "I heard the noise, and I looked over immediately, and I saw his broken neck and him sliding down the slide leaving a blood trail."
Her friend Jess Sanford added: "I only saw Caleb slide down the last half of the slide, and then I saw the blood.
"His friend was screaming for help and I think that's when staff members and medics and stuff started running."
Those who reached him first "just realised he was dead and didn't try to revive him", she added.
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Since the ride was torn down, former employees have alleged that both ride inspections and staff training were inadequate.
It emerged that the opening of the 17-storey water wide was pushed twice because test rides showed rafts flying from the huge ride.
When the ride first opened in 2014, co-owner and Verruckt creator Jeff Henry told USA Today: "We had many issues on the engineering side.
"A lot of our math was based on rollercoasters at first, and that didn't translate to a water slide like this. No one had ever done anything like this."
John Schooley, who designed the killer slide, and fellow co-owner Jeff Henry originally faced charges of involuntary manslaughter and a number of others over Caleb's death, but the charges were dropped in 2019 owing to "improper evidence and testimony".
In a documentary, The Water Slide, footage showed rafts filled with sandbags repeatedly becoming airborne during testing.
Court documents stated that a team of experts who inspected the slide after Caleb's death found “physical evidence that indicated that other rafts had gone airborne and collided with the overhead hoops and netting before the fatality".
An engineering firm hired to inspect the ride right before its opening also issued a damning report that said it "guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants.”
The family was said to have received a settlement of nearly $20million, local media reported in May 2017.
