Murder inquiry into skydiving death
The death of a skydiver whose parachute failed to open over an airfield in North Lincolnshire is now being treated as murder. Stephen Hilder, who was 20, fell 13,000 feet to his death while he was taking part in a jump, at Hilbaldstow Airfield, on Friday.
Detective Superintendent Colin Andrews, who is leading the investigation, said parts of Mr Hilder's kit had been tampered with, so neither his main parachute nor his reserve could open.
He said "It is an absolute fact that both parachutes were deliberately tampered with and on the basis of that we have to strongly suspect that murder was the motive."
Cords cut
Mr Hilder, an officer cadet who had completed more than 200 parachute jumps, was found dead in a cornfield.
His family, from Hereford, paid tribute to a "wonderful son and brother."
Humberside Police carried out forensic tests on the parachute pack used by Mr Hilder and say the cord which deployed the main chute and the strapping to the reserve chute had been cut.
DS Andrews said: "We are entirely satisfied that Stephen's parachute was deliberately tampered with and what we need to find out is who did that and for what reason."
He said Mr Hilder was an experienced skydiver who was safety conscious.
Video footage
"It is a tragic waste of a young man with a bright and promising future and it is a particularly horrendous way to die," he said.
The parachute equipment had been checked on Wednesday - the day the jump had originally been due to take place - and "stored in good working order".
Mr Andrews said the parachute was kept in a store that was locked overnight but was left open in the day.
Police say a fancy dress party was held at Hiblestow Airfield on the evening of 3 July which was attended by a number of people, including Mr Hilder.
Many of the people who attended took video footage and photographs of the party and police are appealing for them to get in contact.
They are also examining video footage of the actual fall which was filmed by people at the site.
Mr Hilder was one of eight people who took part in the jump but no one else was injured.
'Wonderful son'
The airfield has re-started parachute jumping and security has been reviewed.
Meanwhile, a skydiving expert said it would be relatively easy to sabotage a parachute jump.
Dave Hickling, chief instructor with the British Parachute School based at Langar Airfield near Nottingham, said: "You don't need a lot of knowledge to cut things.
"Once you have been on a basic parachute course and you have seen how the parachute deploys, you would have enough knowledge."
In a statement Mr Hilder's family said: "He was a wonderful son and brother, whose place in his very close-knit family will never be filled."
skydiving had "quickly become a total passion" for him after he took it up at Bristol University, they said.
He continued skydiving when he transferred to the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, last year, where he helped revitalise the college's skydiving club.
Multiple injuries
"He made over 200 jumps in the UK, France and South Africa, including freefall and formation diving and his absolute love for the sport never faded," they said.
Mr Hilder was born in Hereford and went to school there before studying for his A-levels at Welbeck College.
The statement continued: "Throughout his time with the Army he kept his love of theatre and music.
"He was a talented percussionist and amateur actor, who loved reading and listening to rock music.
"Steve had a tremendous sense of humour and made friends wherever he went."
A post mortem found Mr Hilder died of multiple injuries.
Skydiving plane crash kills four
JEANNETTE, Pa. June 16 — A Father's Day skydiving trip turned tragic when a small plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing four of the five people aboard. Witnesses told authorities they heard the Cessna 205's engine sputter and cut out before the crash about 1:15 p.m. Sunday at Greensburg-Jeannette Regional Airport.
The aircraft apparently clipped four trees when it crashed about 100 feet from the runway, said Ron Supancic, chief of the Claridge Volunteer Fire Department.
The plane is registered to Charles E. Bryant, of Greensburg, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac said. Bryant, 61, was among the dead, Westmoreland County Coroner Kenneth A. Bacha said.
The coroner's office did not immediately identify the pilot, a 52-year-old Pittsburgh man. The other victims were David Ray, 49, of Seward, and Terry Blanish, 52, of West Newton.
"My world has fallen apart," said Marla Goodlin, 48, who was to marry Blanish next summer in Switzerland. Blanish had 15 years of skydiving experience and was approaching 2,000 jumps, she said.
Blanish, the father of three children, planned to spend Father's Day skydiving before meeting Goodlin for a boating trip, Goodlin said.
Bryant's son, Rodney, 37, said his father, who retired as a machinist about a year and a half ago, had 30 years of skydiving experience and had made more than 3,000 jumps.
Charles Bryant had operated Chuck Bryant's Skydive Bouquet in Greensburg for about 10 years and had the plane for about the same amount of time, his son said.
The plane, built in 1963 and designed for up to five passengers, had taken a skydiving flight earlier in the day and was on its second flight when it crashed, authorities said.
"That airplane was one of the best-maintained jump planes in the sport," Rodney Bryant said. The pilot was experienced and had made skydiving flights with his father before, he said.
An autopsy was to be performed on the pilot, as were toxicology tests required by the National Transportation Safety Board, he said.
The lone survivor, who had apparently been thrown from the plane, was found 10 to 15 feet from the wreckage. The extent of his injuries was not known Sunday night.
The cause of the crash is under investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board sent an investigator to the airport in Jeannette, about 20 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Roger Nelson dies after canopy collision
OTTAWA, Ill. -- Skydiving center owner Roger Nelson, whose Skydive Chicago had been criticized for a high number of fatalities in recent years, has died in a parachute accident. Nelson, 48, was parachuting Saturday with Todd Fey, 43, of Fargo, N.D., when Fey bumped into into Nelson's parachute, causing it to collapse, investigators said. Nelson then fell about 50 feet, said Sgt. Gregory Jacobson of the LaSalle County Sheriff's police.
The sheriff's Office said Nelson was taken to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria and pronounced dead early Saturday evening.
Fey was being treated at Ottawa Community Hospital, where a hospital spokeswoman would not disclose his condition early Sunday.
Nelson's death was the 14th at Skydive Chicago since the facility opened in 1993. It is one of the nation's largest skydiving operations with about 75,000 jumps a year.
"Skydiving is a very unforgiving sport if something goes wrong," said LaSalle County Coroner Jody Bernard. "That could happen to anyone, even if they had a lot of experience. Obviously I've been out there a number of times, and I have not seen any blatant disregard for safety."
Nonetheless, 11 of the deaths at Skydive Chicago, including Nelson's, have occurred in the past five years, making its fatality rate in some recent years as much as eight times the national average, which the U.S. Parachute Association estimates as 1 in 111,000 jumps.
Those numbers spurred LaSalle County State's Attorney Joe Hettel to investigate Skydive Chicago in 2001, but he concluded there was nothing he could do.
"If someone wants to jump out of an airplane, there's not much we can do about it," Hettel said last year.
Nelson said at the time of Hettel's investigation that the ten jumpers who had died since 1998 were all using their own parachutes and "pushing the envelope" in their behavior.
Nelson said reckless skydivers, not Skydive Chicago or its instructors, that led to the accidents.
"I'm doing everything I can," he said. "This whole place is careful, to where we're not tolerating any unsafe behavior."
Nelson was captain of the U.S. Olympic skydiving team in 1982, and served as a director of the U.S. Parachute Association.
On June 16 there was a memorial skydiving jump and service for Nelson who's family members have said they plan to keep SkyDive Chicago open.
Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld returns to Perris Valley Skydiving
The entire staff at Perris Valley Skydiving is excited to announce that Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld is joining the Conatser Family as a partner in the operation of Perris Valley Skydiving. Dan brings with him nearly 25 years experience in the sport and industry of skydiving. Starting the end of June, we will see Dan more and more often as he relocates his family to their new home in Southern California and quickly transitions to the full time scene.
Best known for his unparalleled accomplishments in competitive formation skydiving, Dan BC is a founding member of the Arizona Airspeed team. He has earned 7 World and 19 National Championships in every formation skydiving discipline. Dan was also one of the organizers of the Go Fast 300-way, the current World Record for Largest Freefall Formation and has received numerous other skydiving honors.
Dan BC's experience in the skydiving industry goes far beyond his competitive accomplishments and 18,000+ jumps. He has worked as an AFF Instructor and Evaluator, Tandem Master, Senior Rigger and Pilot. He has owned and managed drop zones, run schools and organized boogies and competitions. He also served as an S&TA; for the United States Parachute Association. Dan has appeared on national and local television numerous times representing our sport. As one of the sport's premiere skydiving coaches, he has shared his wealth of knowledge around the world and helped develop the training programs used by tunnelcamp.com. and at Arizona Airspeed events.
Dan is very excited about this new direction in his long and illustrious career. The opportunity to become a part of what is already one of the most successful drop zones in the world, with the addition of a SkyVenture Wind Tunnel, is the kind of challenge he could not pass up.
Dan is joined on his return to Perris Valley by wife Kristi and his two children Chloe (8) and Landen (4). Please join us in welcoming Dan and his entire family to the Perris Valley team!
Mass skydive to honor 2 killed in biplane crash
As many as 100 skydivers from across the country will gather in Longmont on Saturday for a commemorative jump and memorial service to honor a colleague who died in a plane crash over the weekend. "It's a special kind of memorial that skydivers do for one of their own," said Gary Sands, brother of Jeffrey Sands.
Jeffrey Sands, president of the Mile-Hi Skydiving Center in Longmont, was a passenger in a Pitts S-2B stunt plane that went down in a hayfield northwest of the city on Saturday. The pilot, 57- year-old Thomas Bullington of Boulder, also was killed.
Gary Sands of Golden said Monday that his brother was an adventurous free spirit who logged more than 4,000 jumps since 1984. He was one of 300 skydivers to set a world record with a simultaneous formation jump in December.
"Jeff was a thrill-seeker," Gary Sands said. "He lived life at full throttle. He loved the adrenaline rush, but in spite of that he was known as the consummate perfectionist."
Sands, 49, had to work hard to get his skydiving school off the ground, but his perseverance built it into one of the best, his brother said. He was a safe, able instructor who introduced many to the sport.
Jeff Sands also was known for his annual landing at Folsom Field during the Bolder Boulder race. After much practice with weights and tests, he perfected a method of carrying a giant American flag in by parachute, his brother said.
Sands is survived by his mother, two older brothers and a sister. He was not married and had no children.
"He was married to skydiving and flying," Gary Sands said. "He went the way he would have wanted to go, doing something that he loved."
~ Special to The Denver Post
Instructor honored posthumously for saving student
PITTSBURGH -- Robert Bonadies was falling at a rate of about 176 feet per second when he grasped the rip cord of a student who had tumbled out of control, saving her life and sacrificing his own. Bonadies, 47, of Vernon, Conn., was one of 21 people honored Thursday by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, established in 1904 to recognize human courage under extreme conditions.
He died on May 6, 2002 while instructing students at Connecticut Parachutists, Inc., near Hartford, Conn.
Bonadies, called Bobo by friends and family, was passionate about skydiving and running. His wake was attended by an estimated 4,000 people from both communities, including those he had taught to jump from planes and finish marathons.
The wake lasted more than five hours, said his friend and fellow instructor at Connecticut Parachutists, Inc., Don Semon.
"The circumstances were pretty shocking for everybody, but in this type of work, things happen quickly," Semon said. "Certain people act in certain ways."
Bonadies was performing an "accelerated free fall" from 12,000 feet with another instructor and two students, Semon said.
The student began to tumble around 5,500 feet and was unable to activate her chute, authorities said.
"The procedure is, at 2,000 feet, if a student's canopy is not open, you open your own chute and look out for yourself," Semon said. "You've done everything you can."
Bonadies stuck by his student as she hurtled toward the earth until he was able to activate her chute, enabling her to touch down safely, witnesses said.
Traveling at 120 mph, it was only seconds before Bonadies was killed.
He had been diving since the mid-1970s and was a veteran of more than 2,700 jumps, Semon said.
Bonadies was one of five people honored with the Carnegie Medal posthumously. He is survived by his wife, Lisa and two teenage children.
Also honored Thursday was Michael K. Daley, of Mount Washington, Ky. Daley, 47, a salesman, squeezed under the cabin of a tractor-trailer that had caught fire, trapping a woman inside.
Daley suffered first-degree burns while pulling the woman from the fiery wreck in Jeffersontown, Ky., on Feb. 5, 2002. The woman spent five months in a hospital recovering from extensive burns.
Another medal recipient was 46-year-old firefighter Jerome F. Fryer, of Hamburg, N.J.
Fryer ran from his station during a shootout in March 2001 to aid a police officer who lay wounded just outside.
With police exchanging fire with two men, Fryer helped the officer to the station where he and other firefighters treated him for a gunshot wound to the leg until further medical help arrived.
Industrialist Andrew Carnegie started the hero fund after being inspired by rescue stories from a mine disaster that killed 181 people.
Awards are given only to those the commission feels risked their life to an extraordinary degree in attempting to save the life of another in the United States or Canada. On-duty emergency workers and police are not honored unless their actions are clearly beyond the call of duty.
The awards, bronze medals that come with $3,500 for the honorees or their survivors, are issued five times a year.
About $26.4 million has been issued in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits and continuing assistance over 99 years.
UK Serviceman dies in parachute accident
A 28-year-old serviceman has died during a parachute jump at an airbase in Oxfordshire. The victim was taking part in a recreational jump with the RAF's Sports Parachuting Association at RAF Weston-on-the Green.
Police and ambulance crews were called to the scene at around 1230 BST on Friday.
The identity of the man and the cause of the accident have yet to be released.
The incident was the second parachuting accident in the area this week.
A man, aged about 60, died after suffering multiple injuries in a skydiving accident on Wednesday morning.
It is thought his parachute failed to open when he made a jump at Northamptonshire's Hinton airfield near Brackley, near the Oxfordshire border.
He was taken by air ambulance to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where he later died.
The British Parachute Association and Northamptonshire Police are investigating the incident.
Saving lives with your computer
Dropzone.com users have formed a team to help with a world-wide effort to understand proteins and their role in certain diseases. It is called "Folding@Home" and this effort is already producing results. Some of you may have heard about SETI@Home, and it's search for extraterrestrial intelligence by scanning the skies with radio telescopes and analyzing the signals they pick up from space.
Folding@Home (F@H) works much the same way, in that analysis of data is shared by many computers. Collectively, many computers become one, huge, super-computer. This "super computer" studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. Something much more meaningful to most of us than searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.
To help in this effort is very easy. You simply download a program from http://folding.stanford.edu/. And install it on your computer. The program only runs when you are not using your computer, so it doesn't interfere with any work you are doing.
When you install the program, you can also join the Dropzone.com team. Simply put "31515" for your team number. You can also do this later, or change to a different team at any time.
Join the conversation in the forums
Para-Gear Catalog Photo Submissions
Para-Gear is interested in photographic submissions that you may have for the 2003-2004 Para-Gear Catalog #68. We have taken the time to briefly describe the format and certain criteria that we look for, in order to help you to see if you have something worth submitting. We have included examples of previous catalog covers for your reference.
Over the years Para-Gear has used photos from all of skydiving's disciplines. We do not have a preference as far as what type of skydiving photo it is, rather we look for something that either is eye-catching or pleasing to the eye. In light of the digital age, we are also able to use photos that in one way or another may be less than perfect and enhance them, removing blemishes, flipping images, altering colors, etc.
The following are preferences. However what we prefer and what we get, or choose, are not always the same. If however we came down to a choice between two photos of equal quality, we would opt for the one that met more of our preferences. We typically prefer that the photo be brighter. In the past we have used sunset photos and even a night jump photo, although by and large most of the photos are daytime. We like the subject of the image to have contrast with the background. Subjects that are wearing brighter more colorful clothing usually stand out more. We prefer to have the people in the photo wearing equipment since that is what we sell. Headgear, goggles, jumpsuits, altimeters, audible altimeters, and gloves are all good. We also prefer to see skydivers wearing foot protection.
We do not print any BASE jumping nor any Tandem photographs.
Our basic criteria is as follows:
Vertical Format. The front and back covers of the catalog are both in a vertical format. We can use a horizontal (landscape) shot, as opposed to a vertical (portrait), and then crop it as long as the image lies within a vertical cropping.
Photo Quality. The front and back cover shots will be printed as 8 ½ x 11 in 300 dpi format. Any film that can hold its quality up to this size and print dpi is fine. Slide film is preferred. In the event of a final cover choice, we prefer to be sent the original slide for getting the best quality out of the image.
Back Cover Photo. The back cover photo is no different from the front except in one respect. We need to have room on the left side of the image for the thumb index. In the past we have taken images and been able to horizontally flip them thereby creating this room.
Originality. Anything that is original, eye-catching, or makes someone take more notice of the catalog covers is something we look for. It could be a photo from a unique camera position or angle, a scenic skydive, shots under canopy, landings, etc. We look for photos that have not been previously published and most likely would not accept them if they have, as we want a photo that no one else has seen yet. We also do not want any photos that are chosen as the front or back covers to be used for other non Para-Gear advertising for a period of one year. Para-Gear offers $250.00 each for both the front and back covers we choose. Our current deadline for catalog cover submissions is May 15th 2003. Sending sample pictures by e-mail or mail are both fine. We will return any mailed in photos or slides after we are done with them. Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions.
Sincerely,
Curt Bachman
Para-Gear Equip. Co. Inc.
[email protected]
3 Skydivers Injured Before NASCAR Race
ROCKINGHAM, N.C. - Three Army skydivers were injured Sunday when strong wind knocked them to the ground before a NASCAR race. A group of eight jumpers from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command Parachute team from Fort Bragg came sailing into the track area, trailing red smoke as part of the pre-race activities for the Subway 400 at North Carolina Speedway.
With wind up to 40 mph, one jumper was carried away from his targeted landing on the track and into the infield, where he appeared to bounce off the top of a tractor-trailer before landing on the ground, his chute caught on the antenna of a van.
He was airlifted to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte and was in good condition, a nursing administrator said.
The hospital did not provide the soldier's name. Messages for spokesmen with the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg were not immediately returned.
Another jumper sailed into the garage area and bounced off the top of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s hauler. He landed between race team trucks and a fence.
That jumper, as well as a third who landed hard on the asphalt of the track, were taken to Womack Army Hospital in Fayetteville for treatment of minor injuries. The hospital did not immediately return calls.
Track personnel did not immediately have their names or any other information about the injured soldiers.
At least two jumpers nailed their landings on the front stretch of the race track. Another skydiver never made it to the track, landing outside the Turn 1 grandstands.
~ Associated Press