Authorities say a Miami skydiver died in North Florida when his parachute didn’t deploy correctly during a jump.
The Bradford County Sheriff's Office said Friday that a team of skydivers were practicing a jump when the accident happened on Friday. The group of seven men, all originally from Cuba, were practicing for a weekend event that honors the families of fallen police officers.
News4Jax reported that one of the team members — Nick Perdomo — identified his deceased teammate as 51-year-old Yuset Hernandez.
“We just wanted to give back thanks to law enforcement,” said Perdomo. “Yuset was very big into what he considered his country and this was a way of giving back -- to jump with flags on behalf of all the fallen officers.”
Maj. Brad Smith of the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office said rescue workers were sent to search a wooded area on Friday.
After a few hours of searching a wooded area surrounding the property, rescue crews announced sometime after 8 p.m. that the skydiver’s body was located.
“And the very last jump that they were doing, one of the skydiver’s chutes didn’t deploy fully,” Smith said. “We had it on video where you can see where he released that chute and was trying to open a secondary chute and wasn’t able to get it open in time.”
