The owner of the Northern California skydiving center where the accident happened said Sunday the first-time jumper had his brother and others there watching when he hit the ground with his instructor.
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Officers found the bodies in a field near the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center in Acampo, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
The younger man had been jumping in tandem with a skydiving instructor, a veteran who had about 700 previous jumps, Dause said.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, but if you see a auto wreck, they don’t close the freeway”, Bill Dause, the owner of the skydiving center, told FOX40.
Parachute Center has made headlines in the U.S. frequently of late. “We have no explanation why”, said Dause.
“I’m not happy about it, but it’s part of the deal, I guess”, said Conkright, who has jumped at the center for 21 years.
Dause stated that the parachute used in the tandem jump “failed to eject properly”.
An investigation is ongoing and the Federal Aviation Administration is involved.
Sheriff’s officers say the men’s parachute did not open.
Authorities received a call that the skydivers had hit the ground without an open parachute, said Lt. In February a parachute malfunction killed a solo skydiver, and in May, a plane with 17 divers on board crash-landed upside-down, but no one was seriously injured.
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On Saturday, August 6, two skydivers in California died when they attempted to do a tandem jump and their parachute failed to deploy. The worse injuries anyone suffered “were minor cuts and scrapes”. The only thing it looks like is something may have gone out of sequence.
