“Life goes on,” according to the head of what is reputed to be the most dangerous skydiving center in the United States.
In the past 40 years, 28 people who signed up to skydive from California’s Lodi Skydiving Center have plummeted to their deaths, including 18-year-old Tyler Turner, SF Gate reported.
The teenager’s adventure ended in tragedy in 2016 when his parachute failed to open just minutes after telling his mother he loved her in a haunting final video. It was later learned that his tandem instructor did not have a license.
But while a $40 million judgment was awarded to Turner’s family in 2021, Eight years later not a cent has been paid and the jumps continue in the center.
The center’s owner, Bill Dause, told DailyMail.com that neither Tyler’s death nor those of the others were his fault, insisting that such incidents are “just part of the business.”
Lodi Skydiving Center north of Stockton California has suffered 28 deaths in 30 years
Owner Bill Dause has insisted he has no intention of stopping flights despite the deaths.
A sign directs drivers along California Highway 99 to the skydiving company’s facilities.
Tyler had joined two friends to celebrate his high school graduation before starting college together at UC Merced.
The high school student prayed on the runway and told his mother he loved her one last time before taking off.
“That’s my mom,” Tyler said in his final video message.
‘Very loving mom. She did a lot for me in my life. I hope more that she helps me with more aspects of my life, because I want to achieve it.
Moments later he lay dead in a vineyard next to his tandem instructor and his unopened parachute as the next flight prepared to take off.
Tyler’s mother, Francine Salazar, arrived in time to watch her son’s body being taken away by the coroner’s van, before returning to the center where another excited customer was adjusting his parachute.
“I told him, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it,'” he told SFGate. “You’re going to leave your wife and your children without a dad.”
He said he yelled at owner Bill Dause and yelled, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you realize that someone just died?
Twenty-four people had already died in north central Stockton when Tyler fell to his death.
The youngest was Devon Whittaker, 15, whose parachute failed in April 1993 while jumping with his mother.
In 2019, a flight ignored warnings of high winds and took off with Maria Vallejo, 28, who flew over Highway 99 before crash-landing on the roof of a truck.
Three years ago, Sabrina Call, a local woman, died after her main and emergency parachutes became tangled in the air.
But Dause said “none of the incidents” were related and that the customers who died were “doing their own thing,” despite the ruling against them and other fines imposed on the company.
‘[As for] Why don’t we close it? Have you been to a football game and seen someone injured being taken away in an ambulance? “They don’t close the stadium, they send everyone home and close the business,” he told DailyMail.com.
‘It’s just part of the sport, part of the activity. Whether it is an acceptable risk is something an individual must decide.
‘Have we changed anything? No, not really. Because there is nothing we can change when all the incidents were different.’
In 2019, a flight ignored warnings of high winds and took off with Maria Vallejo, 28, who flew over Highway 99 before crash-landing on the roof of a truck.
Francine Salazar, pictured with her son Tyler, said: “Before he got on the plane, he knelt down and prayed, made his peace with God and then turned around and gave me a big, huge hug.”
“We’re sad, but it’s like a car accident or anything else,” Dause previously told reporters, “They have to move on.”
There are no official figures recording how many people die in parachute accidents because no agency requires reporting on them.
Jim Crouch of the United States Parachute Association (USPA) told SacBee he couldn’t “remember any other large, busy skydiving center with so many deaths since 1985.”
And while the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigates fatal parachute accidents, it merely verifies that minimum regulatory requirements have been met and “does not investigate to determine the cause.”
The FAA imposed fines totaling $933,000 against Dause and his company in 2010 and 2011 for regulatory failures, but they were not paid.
Tyler’s instructor, Yong Kwon, 25, had recently arrived from South Korea and had not been trained or certified to perform tandem jumps in the United States.
In 2016, the USPA expelled Dause and his company from its registry after discovering that 12 instructors trained there had false certificates.
But skydiving companies do not need to be registered with the USPA, and deaths continued to pile up.
An analysis by The Bee found that 10 were caused by equipment problems, eight involved parachutes that became tangled with those of other jumpers, and three involved mid-air collisions with other skydivers.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it does not have the authority to order the closure of a skydiving school, but told SFGate: “The FAA has oversight responsibilities and the authority to end operations in the interest of safety.” “.
But the FAA said that’s not true because skydiving companies themselves don’t require certification.
The lack of oversight is made explicit by UPSA, which states on its website: ‘The FAA and USPA rely on self-regulation within the skydiving community for most operational and training requirements.
“The USPA has no obligation to anyone regarding its skydiving activities,” its information manual warns.
‘All USPA references to self-regulation refer to each individual person regulating or being responsible for himself.’
Tyler’s mother said her son planned to attend UC Merced in the fall to study biochemical engineering because he was born with cerebral palsy and wanted to help others with the condition.
“Before he got on the plane, he knelt down and prayed, made peace with God and then turned around and gave me a big, huge hug,” he added.
“He had integrity like no one else,” he said. ‘Live your life as he would have done. He was an amazing guy.’
Dause, now 81, continues to fly from downtown and has said he has no idea how many people have jumped from his planes.
He said Tyler’s death was an accident and that closing the center afterward would have hurt business. He also accused Tyler’s mother of “contacting every news source” about the tragedy and said she was “stirring the pot because she thinks it could bring someone back or that it was my fault and this wasn’t done right.”
Dause also previously defended his decision to continue flying after Tyler’s death, telling reporters, “We don’t stop because life goes on.” There is nothing I could have done differently that would have changed the outcome.
‘Yeah, I couldn’t have opened this place. I could have stayed home. He could still be on the farm in Utah.
During the lawsuit against Tyler’s parents, Tyler suggested that only his own death would stop the flights. When asked what it would take, he said, “Well, other than the sun setting, that would be the stop.”
Dause claimed he only lost the lawsuit because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
News about the number of deaths at his center has also taken a toll on the business, he said.
‘COVID-19 really slowed us down. But since that moment, all this bad press continues to be news. We used to get a lot of people from England, a lot of people came from Europe, but we still get a lot of bad press for something the center had nothing to do with, apart from what happened here.’