SAN FRANCISCO—The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office announced on Sunday, April 18, that a parachutist at the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center died on Saturday, April 17, after a parachute got tangled.
According to authorities, calls came in around 2:30 p.m. reporting the accident. The woman has been identified as 57-year-old Sabrina Call, a resident of Watsonville who authorities described as a “very experienced” skydiver.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating the case, but their inspections are limited to the parachute rigging.
In March, the facility was ordered to pay a $40 million settlement in a case related to 18-year-old Tyler Turner who died in August, 2016, after the instructor who jumped with Turner did not have a proper license, and both died after their parachute did not open.
In 2006, an experienced jumper sued the parachute center after his leap from a twin-engine plane at 3,000 feet left him with spinal cord injuries; he struck the plane’s tail before crash-landing in a vineyard near Highway 99.
In 2014, a professional skier from Squaw Valley, Timothy “Timy” Dutton, 27, suffered the same fate at Lodi Parachute Center, dying in a nearby vineyard.
In 2019, The Washington Post reported that a 28-year-old woman died during a jump at the same school after a gust of wind sent her careening toward the flow of traffic on Highway 99. She slammed into a big rig and was found dead on the shoulder of the highway.
There have been several more deaths, a total of 22 since 1981.
“We’re sad but it’s just like a car wreck or anything else. You have to go on,” owner Bill Dause told KCRA News.