Victim named, owner speaks after deadly accident at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center
The woman who died Saturday in an accident at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center had jumped about 2,000 times in her life, but did not pack her own parachute before her fatal fall, according to the establishment.
The skydiver, identified Monday by San Joaquin County coroner’s officials as 57-year-old Sabrina Call of Watsonville, fell to her death after her primary parachute and reserve parachute tangled together, a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said Sunday.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Sandra Mendez referred to the woman as an “experienced skydiver” and said the Federal Aviation Administration will be investigating the incident, but gave few other details.
Owner Bill Dause spoke to reporters Monday morning at the Acampo skydiving center with his account of what occurred.
“No one actually saw exactly what happened until probably the last couple hundred feet,” he said. “She had two parachutes out, entangled with each other that weren’t fully inflated, and pointed toward the ground at very rapid speed.”
Dause said he did not know whether Call packed her own parachute Saturday, though with her amount of experience she would have known how to do so. But an employee at Skydive Lodi interjected that her equipment was packed by a contract parachute rigger.
Dause said Call had “a little over” 2,000 jumps of experience, but had “been out of the sport for many years and got back to it a couple of years ago.”
Skydive Lodi Parachute Center will conduct its own internal review of Saturday’s accident, but Dause said that due to law enforcement presence, “they treat it as a crime scene, and as a result, most of the information we get is secondhand.”
He said that while he didn’t know Call well personally, he estimated she had jumped at his business about 10 to 15 times over the past year.
Saturday’s death is the 22nd fatality at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center dating to 1981.
“We’re sad, but it’s just like a car wreck or anything else,” Dause said. “You have to go on.”
One month before Saturday’s incident, a judge granted a $40 million judgment against Dause, awarded to the family of Los Banos resident Tyler Turner, an 18-year-old who died in a 2016 accident at the site.
The ruling came after Turner’s family in a lawsuit claimed the tandem instructor, who also died in that incident, lacked proper training and was still under a probationary period.
Asked Monday how he will go on operating his business in light of legal troubles and owing $40 million, Dause deflected.
“That’s kind of a hard question to answer if you’re not dedicated to the activity you’re doing,” Dause said with a chuckle, before claiming news media were blowing the incidents at the parachute center out of proportion.
The center remained open Monday, as it is 365 days a year, according to its website.
This story was originally published April 19, 2021 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Victim named, owner speaks after deadly accident at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center."
