It's called 'the boogie' in Belize, a now annual parachuting excursion organized in the United States. It sees scores of parachuters from across the world descend on San Pedro in February to skydive over San Pedro and the Caribbean Sea. But tonight, the 120 parachuters who come to Belize for 'the boogie,' are mourning the loss of one of their own after a terrible disaster this afternoon. Parachutist Chad Zellinski plummeted into the sea from a height of 13,000 feet. His parachute never deployed and he crashed into the sea just beyond the reef about a half-mile east of San Pedro Town. 7NEWS has team coverage of the air disaster with our colleague Ron Sniffin from the San Pedro Sun.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
The body of skydiver 46-year-old Chad Hansel Zellinski was lifted into the very air plane he had jumped out of to his death a few hours earlier. From San Pedro, Zellinski's body was transported to Belize City. Once here, a BERT ambulance responded to a call but left because as their policy dictates they cannot carry anyone who is already dead. With that another mode of transportation had to be arranged, this time it was a police pickup truck.
Within minutes Zellinski's body was taken to the KHMH where he was carted into the morgue where it awaits a post mortem. President of Tsunami Sky Divers and coordinator of the yearly jump in San Pedro Rich Grimm told the San Pedro Sun's Ron Sniffin that Zellinski was a very experienced jumper.
Rich Grimm,
"This afternoon one of our very experienced sky divers was flying and when he was flying on this jump with a couple of other people, a couple other jumper, as he was flying over the water, the other jumpers successfully deployed their parachutes and he was seen going all the way and impacting with the water without using his parachutes."
And Grimm says his team of skydivers have taken a look at Zellinski's equipment and have already ruled out any malfunction.
Rich Grimm,
"We can rule out that it was a parachute malfunction. Neither of his parachutes were deployed. We inspected his gear and it was in perfect working order and what we think happened is that he lost track of his altitude, he was out over the ocean, and we don't know if he had a problem with his wing seat material getting caught up in something or he just lost track of altitude and he never had a chance to deploy either parachute. He impacted outside of the reef and we flew our jump line, we had our safety boat. Everyone went out there immediately. We spotted him like within fifteen minutes. We had Aquadives and a bunch of the other dive boats and the Coast Guard boat out looking for him immediately. We had two of the local doctors on standby and unfortunately when we spotted him with the plane, we realized that there was nothing that could
be done."
Zellinski who had been jumping for 9 years was familiar with the hazards of the sport, and Grimm says hurdling to the earth from thousands of feet in the air, there is very little room for error.
Rich Grimm,
"In skydiving you can't make too many errors and unfortunately there were a number of errors made and when you have your parachutes you have to use them and we don't know what happened and we're not going to speculate. We just know his equipment was in good working order and wasn't used. He could have passed out for some reason, he could have had a medical problem, he could have just lost track of his altitude. We don't want to speculate about what happened. It's a tragedy. He was a very good friend of ours, good friend of the jumping community, and a very experienced skydiver so again we can't speculate on what happened. All we know is that his gear was inspected by instructors examiners.
We have very very professional skydivers here and we have very strict safety rules so all we can rule in is that his gear was in perfect functioning working order and the only thing we can determine is that for whatever reason either parachute wasn't deployed."
Now with one of their jumpers having had such a tragic end Grimm says he'll have to gather the other sky divers to determine a course of action. He is certain however that continuing with the tour is something Zellinski would have wanted.
Rich Grimm,
"Knowing the jumper that died as I do, I am sure that he would have want look on and just continue jumping through the weekend. This is something that happens very very infrequently. It's a tragedy, we're all saddened by this tremendously. He was here on vacation with his significant other. When we have to give that kind of news its always a tragedy."
A tragedy in a sport where the adrenaline rush comes with an undertone of possible disaster... And on this day, no one can quite say what caused Chad Zellinski's risky fun to turn to deadly tragedy.
Zellinski was an experienced parachutist with 9 years. And make sure to stay tuned because later on in the newscast, we'll take you inside Rich Grimm's skydiving experience.
