Bill Dause, owner of the Parachute Center, said he was a veteran who had about 700 previous jumps. Francine Salazar told a newspaper Sunday that she accompanied her son Tyler Turner to the Lodi Parachute Center as he and several of his friends celebrated a birthday. The skydive center was in the news in May, when a small plane carrying 17 skydivers took off from there and landed upside-down after clipping a pickup. In February, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported that a solo skydiver had died after a parachute malfunction at the center. The mother of an 18-year-old man who was one of two skydivers who died plummeting into a northern California vineyard said her son was jumping for the first time.

Source: New Zealand Herald August 08, 2016 01:41 UTC