Skydiver dies in crash
Woman drifts onto Highway 99, hit by big rig
ACAMPO — A 28-yearold woman was killed on Highway 99 Thursday afternoon after being struck by a semi-truck as she was landing during a skydive.
California Highway Patrol officers responded to the accident at about 2 p.m. on southbound Highway 99 just south of Jahant Road, near the Lodi Parachute Center.
Officer Ruben Jones, a spokesman for the CHP, said the woman was part of a group of seven other skydivers.
“As they were descending, she collided with the rear trailer of the truck,” Jones said. “Once she impacted with the trailer, she collided with the right hand shoulder. Paramedics arrived and then pronounced her dead on the scene.”
Jones said no other vehicles were involved in the collision. The other six in the woman’s group landed safely, he said.
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office deputies and the CHP blocked the right lane off, causing a traffic delay that extended all the way into Galt.
The Highway 99 frontage road was also congested from the Peltier Road intersection to the parachute center.
Jones said the scene was expected to be cleared by 6 p.m.
He could not say what caused the woman to land on the roadway, or whether she was an experienced skydiver.
The National Weather Service was unable to provide wind conditions for the area around the Lodi Airport at 2:15 p.m.
However, an unofficial report from the sensor at the Stockton Airport showed west winds of about 10 to 15 miles per hour at that time, a National Weather Service official at the Sacramento office said.
When asked if the woman should have been skydiving in such high winds, Jones said he did not know the parachute center’s policy on weather conditions.
Parachute center staff were not on site for comment.
It's been nearly a year since the last fatality at the Lodi Parachute Center. In October 2018, 62-year-old Nena Lowry Mason of Dillon, Colo., an experienced skydiver, was killed when her parachute failed to deploy.
In August 2016, 18-year-old Tyler Turner and tandem instructor Yong Kwon, 25, were killed during a jump. Matthew Ciancio, 42, was killed in May 2017, and Brett Hawton, 54, died in September of the same year.
Assembly Bill 295, also known as “Tyler’s Law,” was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2017. The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, will hold parachute centers accountable in state court if they fail to abide by federal safety regulations. She proposed the law after it was discovered that Kwon was not properly certified as a tandem jump instructor.
According to the United States Parachute Association, there was just one fatality per 133,571 jumps in the U.S. in 2017.
The Federal Aviation Administration will be investigating the death, said spokesman Ian Gregor, who noted that the agency’s skydiving regulations don’t address wind conditions.
“Our investigations in situations like this typically look at whether the parachutes were properly packed by the appropriate person,” he said.
The woman’s identity was not released Thursday.