A 56-year-old man attending a skydiving festival in the northwestern Montana town of Marion was killed when he plummeted to the ground after his parachute became entangled with another man’s.
Fred Sand, owner of Skydive Lost Prairie, which hosts the event, says the accident happened late Wednesday afternoon. He declined to release any details about the man, other than he was a “very, very experienced skydiver.”
Sand says the man’s parachute became entangled with another skydiver’s gear, but he was too low to deploy a reserve once he became untangled. Sand did not know how high the man was when he began his free fall.
Skydive Lost Prairie has not been immune to accidents. A May 2007 plane crash killed all five aboard, including the pilot, two instructors and a couple from Great Falls.