The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office has identified Zack Fogle as the man killed while skydiving in Lost Prairie last weekend.
Fogle, 27, of Kingston, Wash., was pronounced dead on the afternoon of July 30.
Officials say his parachute did not open following a jump at the Lost Prairie Jump Zone near Marion, west of Kalispell. Fogle was among a large group of skydivers who were participating in the 44th annual Lost Prairie Skydiving Boogie, which took place from July 23 through Aug. 1.
The Washington man was a licensed skydiver, authorities stated, and had roughly five years of experience and over 125 jumps.
According to a statement from Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry, Fogle was a quadriplegic with limited mobility and function in his arms and legs. Early investigations showed that Fogle had failed to manually deploy his primary or emergency parachutes once he left the airplane.
The investigation also revealed that the mechanism that would have released the emergency parachute as a fail-safe had not been activated prior to the jump.
Curry also reported that the appropriate safety procedures and policies were in place and had been followed before and after the July 30 accident.
The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, the United States Parachute Association, and the Federal Aviation Administration investigated the incident.
Fogle’s death occurred just over a year after another fatal skydiving accident in Lost Prairie. On July 28, 2010, Garl “Mike” Newby, 57, of Colorado Springs was part of a group of jumpers that had just finished a formation dive when his main parachute got tangled with another jumper’s main chute.
Newby, who had jumped at 13,000 feet, was not able to deploy his reserve chute in time, officials said.