| Date | Location | Category | Age | # Jumps | AAD?/RSL? | Dropzone.com Report | Dropzone.com Discussion | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15/05/2004 | Wild Geese, Northern Ireland | SUI? | 43 | 763 | ?/? | 23 | #1078793 | |
| DropZone.com Description: An off duty soldier died after making a parachute jump in Co Londonderry. Sgt David Halls, 43, from Bangor Co Down, died while taking part in a jump at the Wild Geese Skydiving Club near Garvagh.
A message was found in his car explaining that this was a Suicide. |
||||||||
| Lessons: | ||||||||
| BPA Description: At approximately 14:10 hours on Saturday 15th May 2004, the jumpers boarded a Cessna ‘208’ Caravan aircraft along with seven other parachutists, which was to be the sixth lift of the day.
The aircraft climbed to approximately 13,000ft AGL. A ‘jump run’ was made over the centre of the PLA. Once the aircraft was at the correct Exit Point the first two parachutists to exit were David and another parachutist, who were jumping together. The remaining six parachutists, two Tandem pairs and their video cameramen, exited shortly after. He was carrying out a two-way FS jump. The planned free fall part of the descent went without incident. At approximately 5,500ft AGL the parachutists separated on a signal from David. The other parachutist deployed his parachute at approximately 3,500ft AGL.His parachute was not observed to deploy. All the remaining parachutists’ canopies were seen to deploy normally and were observed to be flying correctly. The DZ controller only observed five fully deployed canopies and could not locate the sixth canopy. Shortly after, a search was instigated in order to locate the missing parachutist. At approximately the same time a local resident informed the Club that he had located the body of a parachutist. |
||||||||
| BPA Conclusions:The first part of the jumper's descent was uneventful. The two parachutists separated in free fall at an altitude to allow them sufficient time deploy their parachutes at a normal height. The other parachutist deployed his parachute at approximately 3,500ft AGL. He observed that the deceased continued to descend in free fall before loosing sight of him.
The Board believe that there could only be one of three reasons for this fatality. That he, (i) lost altitude awareness, (ii) could not deploy his parachute for some unknown (to the Board) medical reason, or (iii) most likely, he intentionally did not deploy his parachute. The Technical Officer advised those present for information, that the Board also believed that the health centre stamp on his Doctor’s Certificate was not authentic. |
||||||||
| Name | Sgt. John David Halls | |||||||