Not a good record to have.....

28 deaths at a California skydiving center, but the jumps go on

Records obtained by SFGATE reveal a string of deadly accidents and lax regulation of the sport

By Andrew Chamings

The skies were blue over the Lodi Parachute Center as Francine Turner and her son, Tyler, 18, arrived with his two best friends. It was Saturday morning, Aug. 6, 2016, and the three boys were there to celebrate their high school graduation with their first skydiving experience before heading to UC Merced together in the fall.

The day before, over lunch, the boys had half-joked about their chutes not opening. Now, a few minutes before boarding the plane, Francine joined them in the hangar that sits just off Highway 99, a few miles north of Stockton in California’s Central Valley. Francine said that the boys were shown a safety video at the same time as they received safety waivers to read and sign, making it impossible to focus on both. She also recalled the boys being ushered into the next room for a harness fitting before the video was over.

“It was hurried and rushed, and seemed very lackadaisical for something that is, you know, your life,” Francine told SFGATE in July last year.

The boys were signed up for tandem jumps — a kind of ride-along that allows novice parachutists to fly through the air while harnessed to an experienced skydiver. Tyler was paired with Yong Kwon, a 25-year-old who had moved from South Korea two months earlier and spoke very little English.

Francine spent a few extra dollars to have a videographer fly up with the boys and film the dive. Then she said goodbye to her son. “He gave me a big hug and said, ‘I love you,’” Francine said. Before boarding the plane, Tyler knelt and said a little prayer on the runway. It was the last time his mother saw him alive.

A few minutes later, Francine saw some people walking back from the drop zone. None of them were Tyler. Francine would later learn that Tyler and Kwon’s main and reserve parachutes had tangled, preventing either from opening; both Turner and Kwon were killed on impact when they hit the ground in a nearby vineyard.

Francine would soon learn that 21 people had died in accidents tied to the center since 1985, as reported in a detailed investigation by the Sacramento Bee; five more have died there in the years since her son’s death. Kwon’s parents, still in Korea, would learn of their son’s death on Facebook.

After her son’s body was taken away, Francine was left bewildered and angry that the planes just kept going up, loaded with skydivers.

“We didn’t stop because we don’t like the guy, we didn’t stop because we weren’t interested in the guy,” the center’s former owner, Bill Dause, told the local TV station, KFSN-TV, that day. “We didn’t stop because life goes on.”

‘I will not contribute to any story that will denunciate the skydiving community’

It’s impossible to calculate the fatality rate per jump at the Parachute Center, because no one keeps track of how many people jump out of planes there — or how many have died while doing so. In 2018, Dause told Sacramento’s KXTV-TV even he wasn’t sure how many deaths had occurred at his business. Dause declined to speak with SFGATE for this story.

In response to a records request in 2023, the San Joaquin County Medical Examiner’s Office provided SFGATE with coroner’s reports detailing many of the 28 fatalities conclusively linked to accidents at the center, the first in 1985 and the most recent in 2021. But there’s no central repository to track the deaths, and no federal or state agency specifically tasked with investigating what happened. Records of numerous investigations into wrongdoing at the Lodi Parachute Center, carried out by the Federal Aviation Administration over the years, were obtained by FOIA request.

The lack of data on fatalities is not unique to the Parachute Center (or to Skydive Lodi, or Acme Aviation, or any of the other names the center has operated under over the years). As federal watchdog the National Transportation Safety Board put it in a 2008 report, “the FAA does not have data on the number of parachute jump operators or the number and type of aircraft used in parachute jump operations in the U.S. The absence of these data precludes any calculations of safety statistics for parachute jump operations, including accidents rates.”

FAA communications manager Ian Gregor told SFGATE the agency does investigate skydiving deaths, but not the cause of them, and its authority to regulate the sport is limited.

“FAA investigations of skydiving accidents and incidents typically focus on inspecting the packing of the parachute and reserve parachute, and rules of flight for the pilot and aircraft. If an accident involves a tandem jump, we also look at the instructor’s qualifications,” Gregor said. “The FAA does not investigate to determine the cause of the event.”

There is no special license for skydiving pilots, and few training requirements for people who want to jump out of planes for fun. The FAA has a handful of specific certification requirements, including for people who want to pack parachutes or lead tandem jumps. But the agency outsources almost all of the training, certification and maintenance of records to parachute manufacturers and the United States Parachute Association, a private industry and lobbying group.

The USPA itself does collect and publish member organizations’ self-reported death rates in aggregate every year, but membership in the group is voluntary. According to its data, there were 10 fatalities out of an estimated 3.65 million jumps in 2023. Many so-called drop zones, including the Parachute Center, are not members, and their numbers are not included in the reports.

The NTSB has repeatedly criticized what it has called the “insufficient regulatory framework” around skydiving, including in 2019, after a skydiving plane crash killed 11 people in Hawaii. The USPA, meanwhile, is currently lobbying against a federal bill that would increase requirements for plane maintenance, which was written in response to the Hawaii tragedy. 

“I will not contribute to any story that will denunciate the skydiving community,” USPA spokesperson George Hargis told SFGATE in November, when asked if someone at USPA would be open for an interview.

The group’s public materials make both its position on regulation and its cozy relationship with the FAA quite clear. “The FAA and USPA rely on self-regulation from within the skydiving community for most training and operational requirements,” according to the USPA website. The USPA’s Skydiver’s Information Manual, which the FAA officially recommends as a resource, is even more direct about the group’s stance on governance.

“USPA has no obligation to anyone concerning his or her skydiving activities,” the introduction to the manual reads. “All references by USPA to self-regulation refer to each individual person regulating or being responsible for him or herself.”

In an emailed statement sent in March, Hargis wrote that the USPA does not oppose increased regulation in the sport, “when it is necessary and appropriate based on data-driven decisions.” She added that deaths in the sport have decreased over the decades, and that fatalities are not counted by region or facility “since that is almost never a factor.” 

“The reality is that the vast majority of skydiving accidents are a result of simple, individual human error,” she wrote.

‘We did not witness the pilot consuming alcohol’

Last year, SFGATE requested both FAA and NTSB investigation records of accidents at Lodi Parachute Center. The agencies replied with page after page of documents, an exhausting chronology of crashes, deaths and near misses.

The first recorded fatality at the Parachute Center was 38-year-old Sunnyvale agricultural worker Michael Abbott, who plummeted to his death on Jan. 27, 1985. According to the coroner’s report, other skydivers in the group lost sight of Abbott as they fell; Abbott’s girlfriend found his body and unopened parachute in a nearby vineyard.

On April 7, 1993, 15-year-old Devon Whittaker of Roseville went skydiving with his mother, who jumped after her son. According to the coroner’s report, she saw his bridle, which helps release the parachute, billowing out of the side before watching her son hit the ground below. (USPA-affiliated sites maintain a minimum age of 18, but there is no law setting age limits for skydiving.) Dause told reporters that the teenager seemed like a mature young man, and had previously completed 10 jumps without incident.

Whittaker’s was the fifth of 28 deaths connected to the Parachute Center since 1985. The map below shows the locations and details of each of the fatal accidents.

There have also been a large number of accidents at the Parachute Center that did not result in deaths.

In May 2016, a few months before Turner’s death, there were two serious plane crashes at the center. In the first, a plane with 17 passengers crash-landed into a field. The momentum sent the plane skidding across a road and into a moving truck before carrying it into a vineyard, where it flipped upside down and came to a halt. The plane was destroyed; no passengers suffered major injuries, but one person caught video of the nightmarish experience.

After the crash, NTSB inspectors placed partial responsibility on a “mechanic’s inadequate inspection” of an important clamp while replacing a fuel line the night before. Ten days later, another plane stalled and crash-landed in a field, resulting in no injuries but “significant damage” to the aircraft.

FAA inspections have documented a plethora of code violations over the years, particularly around maintenance. In 2009, an inspector found numerous problems with both plane safety and record-keeping, leading a concerned official to write that aircraft maintenance at the Parachute Center “seems to be secondary,” and that Dause’s priority was getting planes in the sky. The inspector wrote that a mechanic at the center was “clearly overwhelmed” by the requirements of keeping four planes airworthy. In 2010, an inspector again found a large number of safety concerns, including a plane which Dause had allegedly damaged by cutting 38 holes out of the rear bulkhead to “allow airflow.”

Several of the reports bring to mind the NTSB’s complaints about regulatory laxity. In 2013, for instance, the FAA received an anonymous complaint alleging that a pilot at Lodi had consumed alcohol before flying the plane. In addition, the complaint reported the pilot had smoked a cigarette “in proximity” to a worker who was refueling a plane with the engine running, a dangerous and often-prohibited practice known as “hot fueling,” all while passengers boarded the plane. The complaint also alleged that jumpers were not using seat belts during takeoff and landing.

In response, two FAA officials went to the airport and observed the operation, where they witnessed someone hot fueling a plane, but not while smoking or drinking. “At that time we did not witness the pilot consuming alcohol,” the investigators reported. “We were unable to determine if jumpers were wearing safety restraint harnesses during any phase of the skydiving operations.”

The officials spoke with Dause, according to their report, and agreed to send him a letter “presenting our recommendations to review. No other actions will be taken at this time.”

‘They agreed to stop doing the jumps for now’

In 2010 and 2011, the FAA issued two fines against Dause and his business for failing to comply with federal aviation regulations, totaling $933,000. But FAA spokesperson Gregor told SFGATE that the fine was never collected by the agency, which eventually referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for further action. The Justice Department did not respond to questions about whether the fine was ever paid.

The deaths of Turner and Kwon, though, seemed to be a turning point for the business, both for its legal standing and its reputation. The FAA, USPA, NTSB and U.S. Attorney’s Office all launched investigations related to or stemming from the incident.

Investigators quickly determined that Kwon had been neither officially certified nor properly trained to lead tandem jumps in the U.S., a finding that led California Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman to introduce a bill known as Tyler’s Law, which made operators of skydiving establishments legally responsible for vetting their instructors’ credentials and training. It was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017.

In 2018, Turner’s parents filed a wrongful death suit against both Dause and the Parachute Center; three years later, a judge awarded the family a $40 million judgment, writing in the decision that Dause was personally responsible for the payment. Francine Turner told SFGATE the family has never received any payments from Dause or the Parachute Center.

In 2019, an FAA inspector met with Dause at Lodi and told him to halt tandem jumps while investigations into Turner’s and Kwon’s deaths proceeded. The report concluded with the investigator telling Dause that “if they were caught doing them (tandem jumps) I would have to do another enforcement against them. They agreed to stop doing the jumps for now.”

In 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a federal indictment against Robert Pooley, an instructor who taught tandem courses at the Parachute Center, including the class Kwon took to become a “certified” tandem instructor. The indictment accuses Pooley of conducting tandem trainings after the USPA had suspended his certification to do so, and of forging the signature of another, still-certified tandem instructor on more than 100 students’ certification documents, including Kwon’s. Pooley faces charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a trial set to begin in May.

In 2016, shortly after Turner’s and Kwon’s deaths, the USPA reviewed 140 instructors who had been trained at Lodi, resulting in the suspension of 12 other instructors’ certifications. It also revoked both Dause’s and Pooley’s membership, according to the Sacramento Bee. The USPA declined to tell SFGATE why it revoked either man’s membership, or Pooley’s tandem certification. As a private organization, it is not subject to either state or federal open records laws.

A 2017 analysis of the case prepared for California legislators strongly suggests a cause for Pooley and Dause’s revocations. “According to USPA,” the authors wrote, “the owner of the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center was well aware that the instructor [Kwon] was not certified and had been trained by an instructor-examiner whose credentials had been suspended.” In addition, the indictment against Pooley alleges that Dause received a portion of the money Pooley is accused of collecting fraudulently.

In a 2020 deposition during the Turner family’s lawsuit, Pooley, too, said that Dause had been aware his tandem certificate had been suspended. He also stated that Dause, and no one else, was managing the drop zone at the time of Tyler’s death, as he had been since 1981, according to court testimony by Dause.

‘Don’t you realize someone just died?’

In the two years after Turner’s and Kwon’s deaths, there were three more fatalities at the Parachute Center: X-ray technician Matthew Ciancio, 42, of June Lake, California; Alamo resident Brett Hawton, 54; and Nena Mason, who fell to her death in a nearby alfalfa field.

In 2019, the death of Maria Vallejo, 28, made national news. Planes flew out of Lodi despite high winds, which pushed Vallejo over to Highway 99, where she hit a moving big rig before landing on the road. “It’s only a matter of time before more and more of that happens and more people die,” local trucker Rick Costa told KCRA-TV.

The most recent death at the center occurred in April 2021, when 57-year-old Watsonville woman Sabrina Call slammed into the ground after her parachutes tangled.

“We’re sad, but it’s just like a car wreck or anything else,” Dause told reporters at a press conference two days later. “You have to go on.”

When asked who could actually shut down a site like Lodi, SFGATE was given contradictory answers. According to NTSB spokesperson Peter Knudson, “the FAA has oversight responsibilities and the authority to end operations in the interest of safety.” FAA spokesperson Gregor, meanwhile, told SFGATE this simply isn’t true, as skydiving companies themselves do not require certification.

San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors spokesperson Katie Albertson told SFGATE they have no authority over the site.

Carrying on is a common refrain for Dause. On the stand during the Turner case, for instance, Dause was asked whether he ever closed the business over the course of its many name changes. “Well, other than the sun going down,” Dause told Turner’s lawyer. “That would be the stop.” One coroner’s report, that of Marvell Strawn in 2004, reported that Dause cut the parachute off the victim’s lifeless body before “going back to business.”

On paper, at least, a few things have changed since Turner’s and Kwon’s deaths. In 2021, Dause handed over legal ownership of the operation to an acquaintance named Richard Smith, according to a deposition Smith gave during the Turner lawsuit in 2022. At the end of 2023, though, Dause — now age 81 — was still a familiar presence at the Lodi center, answering phones, taking payments and piloting planes full of parachutists into the sky over Highway 99, as reported by the Sacramento Bee.

Smith, meanwhile, lives in Carson City. He said in his deposition that he does not visit Lodi daily, and that there’s “not much business” at the drop zone. He estimated at the time that the center was taking up “less than three loads a day on average.”

Today, the center is a bleak sight. The only signage visible from Highway 99 is the word “Skydive,” painted on a battered wooden board propped up by a car tire. Beyond that, the rusted frame of an old barn and a derelict phone booth stand next to the hangar where first-time divers nervously wait for their turn to hit the skies.

But back in 2016, the site was a hub of activity, according to Tyler Turner’s mother, Francine. In an interview with SFGATE, she recalled the minutes and hours after her son’s death.

Kwon and Turner’s bodies were found “tucked inside” each other, according to the coroner’s report; Kwon’s hand was still gripping tightly to the ripcord he had failed to deploy. Both bodies were put into the same large red body bag and taken to the morgue.

After the coroner’s van left the vineyard, Francine’s brother led her back to the center. Inside, she was appalled to see instructors going about their business, rolling up parachutes and taking cash from excited customers. She approached a man there with his young family and pleaded with him not to jump.

“I said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it,’” she said. “‘You’re going to leave your wife and your kids with no dad.’”

She recalls screaming at Dause, and then wandering the center in a state of shock.

“What are you doing?” she asked, to no one in particular. “Don’t you realize someone just died?”