Robert Pooley, 49, was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday after being found guilty of operating unauthorized skydiving courses at the Lodi Parachute Center in San Joaquin County, California. Lodi Parachute Center has seen 28 deaths since 1985, but Pooley's crime was using another instructor's signature to sign documents after his certification was suspended.
One of Pooley's trainees was Yong Kwon, a 25-year-old who had recently moved to California from South Korea. On Aug. 16, 2016, Kwon was paired with first-time skydiver Tyler Turner for a tandem jump. Both men died on impact in a nearby vineyard after Kwon was unable to successfully open either the main or reserve chutes. Turner's mother, Francine Turner, described the tragic day to SFGATE last year, and characterized the scene at the Lodi Parachute Center as "hurried and rushed."
The family was awarded a $40m judgment in the subsequent lawsuit, but none of it has apparently been paid and Pooley has not been charged in relation to either of their deaths. SFGate has extensively investigated the parachute center and the similarly bleak situation at others in California.
The most recent skydiving deaths in California occurred in August when instructor Devrey LaRiccia Chase, 28, and student Kayla Black, 28, both died in a tandem jump at Skydive Perris in Riverside County.
Most media remains in a decades-old rut of blindly asserting skydiving's safety when in fact it's so risky that it invalidates many life insurance policies. There are much safer things to do in the Danger Tickle zone than fling yourself out of a plane.
P.S. If there are no settlements and no payments on judgments, that means they don't have insurance either.
