A 40-year-old skydiver from Russia was flown to a hospital Friday morning after making a hard landing in DeLand, officials say.
Nikolay V. Likachev landed underneath an open parachute at Skydive DeLand at the DeLand Municipal Airport shortly after 9 a.m., according to police.
In a 911 call, a witness with the skydiving company said Likachev hit the ground “very hard” and was unconscious, but breathing.
The witness said she didn’t see how he fell, but that his parachute was “completely” open.
“We didn’t quite see the whole incident ourselves, he’s kind of behind one of our buildings,” she said. “We just noticed that we witnessed that he hit the ground a little hard.”
She told the dispatcher that Likachev didn’t have any other visible injuries.
Emergency medical crews flew him to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach, according to police. His condition wasn’t immediately known.
No other details about the incident have been released.
Two people were killed and at least two others injured at Skydive DeLand in 2015, reports show.
A Navy SEAL died during a training exercise in January that year, and three months later, a 33-year-old woman was killed in a mid-air collision.
In June 2015, a man was flown to a hospital with injuries to his head and legs. Another man suffered a broken leg four months later after making a hard landing.
A parachutist from Ukraine was killed in Marion County in October 2016 while leading a group of skydivers doing military-style parachuting. Investigators said his reserve parachute accidentally deployed and he fell out of the single-engine plane.
This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.
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