Bridge Day tragedy

Victim was 66-year-old retired police officer

By Fred Pace

FAYETTEVILLE — As Register-Herald photographer Lew Whitener focused his camera to take his first picture Saturday morning of a BASE jumper leaping from the New River Gorge Bridge, he knew something was wrong.

“I was following this guy all the way down waiting for his parachute to open,” Whitener said. “It just never really opened.”

Brian Lee Schubert, 66, of Alta Loma, Calif., died in the 11:45 a.m. mishap when his parachute opened too late and he hit the river, authorities said. Schubert was described as an experienced jumper with numerous prior jumps. In 1966, he and a friend became the first people to jump from El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot-tall rock formation in California’s Yosemite National Park.

It was the first BASE jumping death at Bridge Day since 1987 and the third since the event started in 1980.

Whitener said once Schubert reached the halfway point between the bridge and the river, 876 feet below, it became obvious to those watching from below something horrible was about to happen.

“It was like everybody kind of held their breath, then an eerie silence afterward. Everybody kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Wow,”’ Whitener said.

Those watching from atop the bridge apparently had no idea what had occurred in the water below.

“There was a large rock that obscured the crowd’s view of the man hitting the water,” Whitener said.

It was a different view for those below the bridge.

“Everyone gave a collective gasp when people realized the parachute was not opening,” Whitener said.

Whitener said it appeared the chute didn’t start to open until the man was about 25 feet above the water.

“He hit the water hard.”

Whitener said an unidentified woman ran screaming through the crowd toward the area where the man hit the water.

Jumping from the bridge was temporarily suspended while Schubert’s body was recovered by rescue boats and taken by ambulance to a local funeral home, Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird said.

Laird said Schubert’s body was examined by the county medical examiner and it appeared his death was the result of impact with the riverbed.

Organizers decided to allow jumping to resume following the accident.

“The weather has been good in southern West Virginia (Saturday),” Laird said. “No measurable winds or anything would appear to have contributed to adverse conditions making this any more dangerous than BASE jumping would ordinarily be.”

Schubert, a retired Pomona, Calif., police lieutenant and graduate of the FBI Academy, was one of 388 jumpers from 13 countries who paid the $75 application fee to jump from the nation’s second-highest span.

Mathis Reimann, who jumped within an hour after the accident, said Schubert’s death put a “damper” on the festival.

“It’s a dangerous sport and makes it clear that you really have to be careful,” said Reimann, who is currently living in Michigan. “There hasn’t been a fatality in 20 years, so maybe we all got a little complacent and thought that the worst risk was injury, but it is not. You make mistakes, you pay for it.”

Schubert’s equipment was collected and will be inspected as part of a joint investigation by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and National Park Service.

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A total of 804 jumps were made Saturday, Laird said.

The sheriff noted there were additional injuries to jumpers.

“Three required transports to local community hospitals and the other was determined to be minor,” he said.

Witnesses below the bridge reported seeing a jumper land hard on his back and then being carried off in a stretcher by emergency rescue workers.

A handful of other minor injuries were reported throughout the day by medical personnel stationed near the base of the bridge at the landing zone near Fayette Station, according to Laird.

“There are inherent risks these people take when BASE jumping and injuries have unfortunately been part of past festivals,” Laird said.

A spokesperson for the National Park Service said there were an estimated 56 water landings and 148 shore assists with all other jumps being unassisted in the landing zone.

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The fatality was the first in 19 years at the popular event. It was the third Bridge Day fatality and the fourth overall death from BASE jumping off the New River Gorge Bridge.

In 1983, Michael Glenn Williams, 25, was the first Bridge Day fatality.

It was determined that Williams had a slow main opening and possibly deployed his reserve too quickly. With two canopies out, he landed in the river and signaled he was all right.

However, Williams made no attempt to get out of his gear and his reserve canopy caught the swift current and pulled him under the surface of the water.

In 1983, there was only one rescue boat, which was busy at the time pulling another jumper from the water. Since that fatality, Bridge Day jumpmasters don’t release jumpers until the rescue boats are free and standing by.

In 1986, Rick Stanley was the second to die jumping from the bridge, but it didn’t occur during Bridge Day.

Stanley also apparently had a slow opening. He was low man on a two-way jump and had a short canopy ride before landing in the rapids directly below the bridge known as the “Zipper.” He was also taken underneath the surface of the water and drowned.

In 1987, Steve Gyrsting was making his third jump of the day using a skydiving pilot chute and a skydiving bridle. It was reported that jumpmasters questioned Gyrsting’s set-up, but he replied, “It’s always worked before.”

Gyrsting then launched cleanly for a planned three-second delay. He released the hand-held pilot and the bridle fully extended. However, the pilot chute did not inflate. In videotape of the jump, the pilot chute appeared inverted with the mesh side out.

Reports indicated Gyrsting pulled his reserve ripcord handle around the fifth second of his freefall, but received only line stretch prior to impact. That jump began the process whereby larger BASE pilot chutes and longer BASE bridles became mandatory at Bridge Day.

Once a year, the National Park Service allows people to parachute off the world’s second-longest single-span bridge to the river below.

The sport of BASE jumping involves parachuting off buildings, antennas, spans and earth formations. Since 1981, there have been at least 100 BASE-jump fatalities around the world, according to the World BASE Fatality List, a Web site maintained by a BASE jumper.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

— E-mail: fpace@register-herald.com