Posted on 01/15/2018 1:26:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
A San Jose high school tennis coach is missing and presumed dead after a skydiving accident last week in New Zealand, police and high school officials said.
Tyler Nii appears to have died last Wednesday after he plunged into Lake Wakatipu in the South Island of the country.
Nii, 27, was a tennis coach at Archbishop Mitty High School, according to a Facebook post Friday by the school's department of athletics.
"Tyler Nii, beloved coach of our men's and women's tennis programs passed away this week in a tragic accident," the post said. "All of us: players, coaches, friends and colleagues are saddened by this loss."
New Zealand police said they were alerted at 1:42 p.m. local time after two male skydivers landed in the lake near Jack's Point.
One skydiver was recovered from the water and was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
On Wednesday afternoon a search was underway for Nii. A water and air search was coordinated by the Coast Guard but was suspended at about 4:40 p.m. Up to 12 vessels had searched for Nii.
On Thursday morning, police were deciding whether to use sonar to find Nii's body.
Police said Nii was a client taking part in a tandem jump. The other person in the dive was a jumpmaster from NZONE Skydive, a skydiving company.
Monday morning, police said the National Dive Squad had arrived in Queenstown and was setting up sonar equipment to search the lake.
Police said the setup was expected to take most of the day and a decision on whether to deploy sonar would be made later in the day.
Lakes-Central Area, said, "The operation is a very complex one given the depth of Lake Wakatipu."
But Jensen added, "The search team is committed to finding Tyler and our thoughts are with his family at this time."
...Wonder what they talked about on the way down...?
A parachute is one thing that if you need it and don’t have it, You won’t ever need it again...
Probably his to pronounce “Nii.”
Oops... make that
Probably HOW to pronounce “Nii.”
:-)
The Knights that say “Nii”
Was the deceased a Freeper? Trying to figure out why it was posted. Maybe just another display of bad judgement and bad taste?
Another great man proving his masculinity by jumping out of an airplane for the rush of flight. If someone didn’t get killed every now and then there would be no challenge.
not “Dilly dilly”?
I did that too, when I was trying to impress this girl. I remember my first jump: the little plane flying away with all the other people looking back at me, and my stomach coming up into my throat as I’m falling and falling and falling. My first thought: why did I just do that?
But if your interested in the statistics, this was published in 2016:
The most up to date skydiving statistics come from 2014, when the USPA recorded 24 fatal skydiving accidents. There were 3.2 million jumps in total that year, making for a total of 0.0075 fatalities per 1,000 jumps.
Tandem skydiving has an even better safety record, with 0.003 student fatalities per 1,000 tandem jumps over the past ten years.
That's 3 in a million. Disclosure: I have 'survived' over 7000 skydives over about the last 37 years. I trained in the military early on, but almost all of those were for sport or teaching. I went on to be an aviator and while I continued in the sport, jumping out of the plane is frowned upon in the general pilot community.
Did it work?
“Was the deceased a Freeper? Trying to figure out why it was posted. Maybe just another display of bad judgement and bad taste?”
Lighten up——you may not be interested but some people may be.
.
So it was a double fault?
Could be adrenalin addiction.
What does a fraction of a fatality look like?
I know the family quite well, and respected citizens in the San Jose area. They are obviously quite devastated, and I feel for them. Last name is pronounced like “knee”. The missing story is what caused the instructor to steer into the icy lake, rather than land.
I read the instructor was a Master Tandem sky diver with 3000 jumps to his credit. Still so terrible.
I read the instructor was a Master Tandem sky diver with 3000 jumps to his credit. Still so terrible.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.