Kansas

Former Schlitterbahn Co-Owner Pleads Guilty to Drug Charge

Water Park Fatality Slide
Charlie Riedel/AP (File)

FILE – In this Oct. 30, 2018, file photo, crews dismantle the Verruckt waterslide at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kan. A judge has dismissed criminal charges against the Kansas water park owner and the designer of a 17-story slide on which a 10-year-old boy was decapitated in 2016. The Kansas City Star reports that Wyandotte County Judge Robert Burns found Friday, Feb. 22, 2019, that state prosecutors showed grand jurors inadmissible evidence in dismissing second-degree murder charges against Schlitterbahn owner Jeff Henry and designer John Schooley. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

The former co-owner of a Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas when a 10-year-old boy was killed on one of its rides faces sentencing in March after he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge.

Jeff Henry, 66, pleaded guilty Dec. 16 to possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute. In exchange for the plea, two other drug-related charges and a charge of hiring someone for sex were dismissed.

Henry was charged in 2018 after police found drugs and an alleged sex worker in a Merriam hotel room he and others were in, KCUR reported.

Henry will be sentenced March 4.

The arrest occurred while Henry and other Schlitterbahn officials faced charges, including second-degree murder, in the death of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab, who was decapitated on a Schlitterbahn water slide in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2016. Henry was awaiting a court hearing in that case when he was arrested at the hotel.

The charges involving Caleb Schwab’s death were later dismissed when a Wyandotte County judge found the Kansas Attorney General relied on improper evidence to influence the grand jury that brought the charges.

Schlitterbahn closed its Kansas City location and now operates only two parks in Texas.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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