Andrew Throton - The Cocaine Parachutist

[stratostar 5]

http://www.wbir.com/news/article/273314/2/TN-Truth-or-Tall-Tale-The-Cocaine-Parachutist-

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[NovaTTT 1]

Those were interesting times.

The Bluegrass Conspiracy is a good read.

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[mark 91]

He was jumping an all-black Rapid Transit with cargo rings on the main lift webs; his reserve was Pioneer Super-22 #597970.

Mark

[SEREJumper 1]

Any idea what kind of main?

We're not fucking flying airplanes are we, no we're flying a glorified kite with no power and it should be flown like one! - Stratostar

[WGore 0]

mark

He was jumping an all-black Rapid Transit with cargo rings on the main lift webs; his reserve was Pioneer Super-22 #597970.

Mark

Drew had a number of rigs. The info that I got was that the reserve was square. I was interviewed and i may have forgotten some of the details but the gist was that his aorta was ruptured and the brakes on the reserve were never released.
They were using a Cessna 402 for this run and the door is very close to the horizontal stabilizer. There have been several fatalities over the years with people hitting the tail which is why they were never used much for skydiving.
My theory is that he set the auto pilot for climb and headed out to sea and ran to the back of the airplane to exit. The auto pilot probably wouldn't compensate fast enough along with the bag of cocaine maybe catching air and slamming him into the horizontal. He knew he was hurt and pulled the reserve but didn't maintain conscientiousness long enough to release the brakes.
I'll try and find my log books from back then and see which reserves might have been used. He had round reserve rigs but that would have been a small reserve for the load he was carrying and Drew was a big guy.
I remember a Black main but can't remember the brand, but it was big. In fact he used it to jump off of a building in downtown Louisville KY but didn't use an oversize pilot chute and damned near bought it then. Folks that were there said he was only under canopy 2 to 3 seconds. The others were all opened much much higher.

GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!

[airdvr 184]

IIRC, wasn't this somehow tied to "Cowboy's Caravan"? I thought the story was Thornton and cowboy were skimming off the shipments and payback was the Jenkinsburg crash. Strange times indeed.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[WGore 0]

Drew and Cowboy were friends but I don't know that he was involved in any way. I think that rumor was started by DEA to try and shake some information loose. There were a lot of friends to many people lost in that crash including one very close friend of mine.
NTSB ruled it water in the fuel along with a clogged fuel filter. Add to that mix a really green pilot with very few hours in the Caravan and the outcome was a disaster.

GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!

[chuckakers 308]

WGore

Drew and Cowboy were friends but I don't know that he was involved in any way. I think that rumor was started by DEA to try and shake some information loose. There were a lot of friends to many people lost in that crash including one very close friend of mine.
NTSB ruled it water in the fuel along with a clogged fuel filter. Add to that mix a really green pilot with very few hours in the Caravan and the outcome was a disaster.

Yeah, everyone had the cash for a brand new Cessna Caravan in '85.

Yours Truly,
95870-024

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[WGore 0]

chuckakers

*** Drew and Cowboy were friends but I don't know that he was involved in any way. I think that rumor was started by DEA to try and shake some information loose. There were a lot of friends to many people lost in that crash including one very close friend of mine.
NTSB ruled it water in the fuel along with a clogged fuel filter. Add to that mix a really green pilot with very few hours in the Caravan and the outcome was a disaster.

Yeah, everyone had the cash for a brand new Cessna Caravan in '85.

Yours Truly,
95870-024

I don't have any first hand knowledge of that. Cowboy was a business man and fairly successful at that from what I heard and he was leasing the Caravan out to DZs for boogies. Point taken though.

GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!

[chuckakers 308]

WGore

****** Drew and Cowboy were friends but I don't know that he was involved in any way. I think that rumor was started by DEA to try and shake some information loose. There were a lot of friends to many people lost in that crash including one very close friend of mine.
NTSB ruled it water in the fuel along with a clogged fuel filter. Add to that mix a really green pilot with very few hours in the Caravan and the outcome was a disaster.

Yeah, everyone had the cash for a brand new Cessna Caravan in '85.

Yours Truly,
95870-024

I don't have any first hand knowledge of that. Cowboy was a business man and fairly successful at that from what I heard and he was leasing the Caravan out to DZs for boogies. Point taken though.

Really? Can you describe his success as a "business man"?

I met Cowboy and Andy during their 1985 "Cowboy's Caravan" boogie tour. They were joined at the hip and the best of "best friends".

Jus' sayin'.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[jonstark 8]

chuckakers

I met Cowboy and Andy during their 1985 "Cowboy's Caravan" boogie tour. They were joined at the hip and the best of "best friends".

Jus' sayin'.

Snakes don't have hips.

[chuckakers 308]

jonstark

***

I met Cowboy and Andy during their 1985 "Cowboy's Caravan" boogie tour. They were joined at the hip and the best of "best friends".

Jus' sayin'.

Snakes don't have hips.

lol

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[Niki1 1]

This past season on "Justified" was all about someone who jumped with a large amount of cocain years before. It sounded a lot like who ever wrote it knew quite a bit about Driveway Drew.

Also, back at that time, I heard that before he jumped Drew threw out a couple of duffle bags of coke. When the cops found them there was a dead bear near one of them. That was the story I heard and I always wondered about the bears final moments. "Hey, that looks like sugar." SNIFF "Oh, that's not sugar. That's... that's ... that's pretty tasty whatever it is." SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF SNIIIIFFFFF. "WOW. UH OH." Thud

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?