Not Guilty

Not that anyone reads this blog but my apologies for the delay. Looks like the prosecutors office here has dropped the ball in a number of ways. Firstly they charged the wrong company with murder in the initial filings resulting in the charges being dropped. Blunder! If that wasn't bad enough during the trial of the first two folks in this case the prosecutors filed the complaint in the wrong court for at least one of the defendants. Regardless they made a poor case for obstruction of justice per the report here in the Kansas City Star (paywall preventing the link; will post direct link later).

Schlitterbahn's corporate spokesperson trumpeted the integrity of their staff in a statement at the end of the trail but the results of the trail make it seem they got off on a technicality. In addition to the jury taking into consideration that the crime alleged -- obstruction of justice -- did not occur in the jurisdiction of the court (a big mistake on the part of the prosecutors office which, according to the reporting, they did not realize their mistake until the trail had began) they also found that the maintenance workers themselves did not mislead the investigation because the request to repair the ride never actually reached the employees on trial. So not guilty because the park had no traceable system for work orders -- one of the failed items on  the state audit from 2018 -- and it looks like they've dropped similar charges against future defendants in other related trials.

Other news: 

1. Jeff Henry's life is falling apart see here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article220903915.html (paywall) per reports in the Star he injected Meth into his neck before enjoying a day at Schiltterbahn with his personal sex slave (part of the cost of which was allegedly paid for with Schlitterbahn day passes). He is now charged with drug possession and sex crimes in Texas and is in a rehab center according to his attorney in that case as reported by local TV News
2. No trail date for the charges against Henry and the manslaughter charges for the Park Directors who, per the results of the first trial, never passed along maintenance requests to make the ride safe.
3. The media is speculating that the company appears to be considering not operating the Kansas City property in 2019