| Don't you just hate when that happens? |
Thousands of people watched a pioneering parachutist jump to his death from a bridge during a festival when his chute opened too late.
| "Geronimo-o-o-o-o-o-oh-oh-oh-OH-OH-OH-SHI-I-I-I-IT!!" |
Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered on Saturday when he hit the water 876 ft below the New River Gorge Bridge during West Virginia's annual Bridge Day festival, said the Fayette county sheriff, Bill Laird.
Schubert, from Alta Loma, California, had been well known in the sport of Base jumping since 1966, when he and a friend became the first people to jump from El Capitan, a 3,000 ft tall rock formation in Yosemite National Park in California. The sport's acronym stands for the places jumpers usually leap from: buildings, antennae, spans and earth.
The fatality is the first since 1987 at Bridge Day, a popular event that typically draws an estimated 100,000 spectators and about 400 parachutists to the southern part of the state.
To qualify to jump off the bridge, applicants must have skydived at least 50 times. Jumping at the festival was allowed to go on after Schubert's body was recovered and taken to a funeral home. "No measurable winds or anything would appear to have contributed to adverse conditions making this any more dangerous than Base jumping would ordinarily be," Mr Laird said.
Mathis Reimann, who jumped within an hour after the accident, said that Schubert's death made him think about safety. "It's a dangerous sport and makes it clear you really have to be careful," he said.
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