Tyler Turner was killed Saturday along with his instructor in a tandem jump at Lodi Parachute Center.
The wind was "perfect," the plane was set and, moments before his first skydiving excursion, an 18-year-old was on his knees near a Northern California runway. His mom snapped a photo and put it online.
"A prayer. Who he is," she wrote. "I love you son."
"He knelt down and prayed, made his peace with God, and then turned around and gave me a great big, huge hug," Francine Salazar told the Merced Sun-Star. "He said, 'I love you, Mom' - and then he got on the plane."
Authorities have not yet released the victims' names, but Salazar said it was her son, Tyler Turner, who was killed Saturday along with his instructor in a tandem jump at Lodi Parachute Center in San Joaquin County, about 30 miles south of Sacramento.
About 10 a.m., Salazar said goodbye to her son and watched him go up for his dive.
She never saw him come down.
"I was watching everybody coming down," she told the Sun-Star. "They look like little dots and you can't tell who is who. We didn't know what color his 'chute was.
"I asked everyone where he was and nobody panicked or anything, we just started looking for him. He went really far off course."
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded to a call that morning about a skydiver who had plummeted to the ground when his parachute failed to open. Deputies found the "tandem jumpers" dead in a field, according to a statement which noted: "It appeared that the parachute did not deploy until after impact."
The Federal Aviation Administration, which is leading the investigation, sent an inspector to the parachute center Monday, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said in an email to The Washington Post.
The FAA's role in such investigations is to see whether parachutes were packed properly.
"The parachute failed to eject properly; we have no explanation why," Bill Dause, who owns Lodi Parachute Center, told NBC affiliate KCRA. "The only thing it looks like is something may have gone out of sequence [and] that may have caused the problem."
Salazar, the teen's mother, told the Sun-Star that she paid to have the jump filmed, but said the FAA took the footage as part of its investigation.
Salazar said she was concerned even before her son and his friends boarded the plane. She said that during the training, an instructor told them they didn't need to finish watching an instructional video before the jump.
"I don't know why they have it if they don't need to watch it," she told the newspaper.
Dause, the Parachute Center owner, told the Sun-Star that because the footage runs on a loop, he was "pretty sure" the jumpers saw the entire video.
"But, it wouldn't have made any difference," he said. "It was an unfortunate accident."
The Lodi Parachute Center, which opened its doors in 1964, claims to be "one of the largest and oldest drop zones," according to its website.
In February, the parachute center made news when a solo skydiver died during a "parachute malfunction," according to the Lodi News-Sentinel. Three months later, a small plane carrying 17 skydivers from the center crashed in a nearby vineyard, but those on board suffered only minor injuries, according to the newspaper.
Gregor, with the FAA, said the agency has proposed fines against the parachute center in the past for "allegedly failing to follow Airworthiness Directives for aircraft."
"These proposed civil penalties were related to aircraft maintenance and not to any accidents," he wrote in an email to The Post.
The United States Parachute Association reports that such incidents are rare. In 2014, for instance, there were 24 fatal skydiving accidents during some 3.2 million jumps across the country.
Tandem jumps, such as the one Saturday morning at Lodi Parachute Center, have an even lower rate of fatalities: 0.003 per 1,000 skydives.
When reached by The Post, Dause, the center's owner, declined to comment further on the incident. But he told KCRA that he does not believe his instructors made a mistake.
Dause said the skydiving instructor who was killed in the recent incident was an independent contractor who had jumped some 700 times.
"We didn't do anything wrong," he said. "It's a love of the sport. You keep going. You feel sorry for the people who can't participate any longer."
Salazar told the Associated Press that she was appalled the Lodi Parachute Center continued sending jumpers up while she waited to learn her son's fate.
"I'm out there waiting for my son to be recovered, for hours, and they just kept jumping over my head," she said.
Turner had recently graduated with honors from Pacheco High School in Los Banos and was set to start classes at the University of California in Merced, where he wanted to major in biomedical engineering, his mother told the Sun-Star.
"He was born with cerebral palsy and he wanted to do something to help others with the condition," Salazar said. "He was going to find something that would help people. He was going to change the world."
Saturday night, Pacheco High tweeted "thoughts and prayers to the family of Tyler Turner."
"He was an incredibly strong boy, had integrity like nobody else," his mother told Sun-Star. "Live your life like he would've. He was an incredible boy."
She told the Associated Press that skydiving was on her son's bucket list.
"One of the last things they wanted to do was go on a skydiving trip they've been talking about," she said of her son and his friends, who jumped safely. "I hate for any other mother to go through this."
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"A prayer. Who he is," she wrote. "I love you son."
"He knelt down and prayed, made his peace with God, and then turned around and gave me a great big, huge hug," Francine Salazar told the Merced Sun-Star. "He said, 'I love you, Mom' - and then he got on the plane."
Authorities have not yet released the victims' names, but Salazar said it was her son, Tyler Turner, who was killed Saturday along with his instructor in a tandem jump at Lodi Parachute Center in San Joaquin County, about 30 miles south of Sacramento.
About 10 a.m., Salazar said goodbye to her son and watched him go up for his dive.
She never saw him come down.
"I was watching everybody coming down," she told the Sun-Star. "They look like little dots and you can't tell who is who. We didn't know what color his 'chute was.
"I asked everyone where he was and nobody panicked or anything, we just started looking for him. He went really far off course."
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded to a call that morning about a skydiver who had plummeted to the ground when his parachute failed to open. Deputies found the "tandem jumpers" dead in a field, according to a statement which noted: "It appeared that the parachute did not deploy until after impact."
The Federal Aviation Administration, which is leading the investigation, sent an inspector to the parachute center Monday, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said in an email to The Washington Post.
The FAA's role in such investigations is to see whether parachutes were packed properly.
"The parachute failed to eject properly; we have no explanation why," Bill Dause, who owns Lodi Parachute Center, told NBC affiliate KCRA. "The only thing it looks like is something may have gone out of sequence [and] that may have caused the problem."
Salazar, the teen's mother, told the Sun-Star that she paid to have the jump filmed, but said the FAA took the footage as part of its investigation.
Salazar said she was concerned even before her son and his friends boarded the plane. She said that during the training, an instructor told them they didn't need to finish watching an instructional video before the jump.
"I don't know why they have it if they don't need to watch it," she told the newspaper.
Dause, the Parachute Center owner, told the Sun-Star that because the footage runs on a loop, he was "pretty sure" the jumpers saw the entire video.
"But, it wouldn't have made any difference," he said. "It was an unfortunate accident."
The Lodi Parachute Center, which opened its doors in 1964, claims to be "one of the largest and oldest drop zones," according to its website.
In February, the parachute center made news when a solo skydiver died during a "parachute malfunction," according to the Lodi News-Sentinel. Three months later, a small plane carrying 17 skydivers from the center crashed in a nearby vineyard, but those on board suffered only minor injuries, according to the newspaper.
Gregor, with the FAA, said the agency has proposed fines against the parachute center in the past for "allegedly failing to follow Airworthiness Directives for aircraft."
"These proposed civil penalties were related to aircraft maintenance and not to any accidents," he wrote in an email to The Post.
The United States Parachute Association reports that such incidents are rare. In 2014, for instance, there were 24 fatal skydiving accidents during some 3.2 million jumps across the country.
Tandem jumps, such as the one Saturday morning at Lodi Parachute Center, have an even lower rate of fatalities: 0.003 per 1,000 skydives.
When reached by The Post, Dause, the center's owner, declined to comment further on the incident. But he told KCRA that he does not believe his instructors made a mistake.
Dause said the skydiving instructor who was killed in the recent incident was an independent contractor who had jumped some 700 times.
"We didn't do anything wrong," he said. "It's a love of the sport. You keep going. You feel sorry for the people who can't participate any longer."
Salazar told the Associated Press that she was appalled the Lodi Parachute Center continued sending jumpers up while she waited to learn her son's fate.
"I'm out there waiting for my son to be recovered, for hours, and they just kept jumping over my head," she said.
Turner had recently graduated with honors from Pacheco High School in Los Banos and was set to start classes at the University of California in Merced, where he wanted to major in biomedical engineering, his mother told the Sun-Star.
"He was born with cerebral palsy and he wanted to do something to help others with the condition," Salazar said. "He was going to find something that would help people. He was going to change the world."
Saturday night, Pacheco High tweeted "thoughts and prayers to the family of Tyler Turner."
"He was an incredibly strong boy, had integrity like nobody else," his mother told Sun-Star. "Live your life like he would've. He was an incredible boy."
She told the Associated Press that skydiving was on her son's bucket list.
"One of the last things they wanted to do was go on a skydiving trip they've been talking about," she said of her son and his friends, who jumped safely. "I hate for any other mother to go through this."
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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