Skydiver perishes during first jump

Bill Dause, owner of the Lodi Parachute Center, told reporters that the other victim was an instructor with an experience of 700 jumps.

Authorities still were trying to reach one of the men’s family for notification, sheriff’s Sgt. The other man was in his mid-20s, Riley said.

Salazar paid to have her son’s jump videotaped, and investigators are now examining the footage, she said.

One of two skydivers killed Saturday was an 18-year-old Los Banos man who graduated from high school just two months ago and was jumping for the first time, his mother said Sunday in an interview with the Merced Sun-Star.

He had a mild case of cerebral palsy and walked with a crouched gait that did nothing to dampen his zest for life, Salazar Turner said.

Deputies received a 911 call around 10 a.m. from someone reporting a skydiver hit the ground without an open parachute, according to the statement.

Before going up in a plane, Tyler Turner knelt at the edge of the jumping area and said a quick prayer.

She said didn’t see her son come down with his instructor because of the distance and not knowing what colour their parachute was.

San Joaquin County sheriff’s officials as of Sunday had not publicly identified the new skydiver or the skydiving instructor killed Saturday in Lodi, California, 136 kilometres east of San Francisco. “The only thing it looks like is something may have gone out of sequence (and) that may have caused the problem”. “I hate for any other mother to go through this”.

Salazar said she was concerned before the jump because an instructor told her son and his friends they didn’t need to finish watching the safety video shown beforehand. He was there with several friends celebrating a birthday, she said. She thought the center might halt operations.

“I’m out there waiting for my son to be recovered, for hours, and they just kept jumping over my head”, she said.

Two skydivers died in a tandem jump on Saturday in California after their parachute failed to deploy, authorities said.