STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo.—The Steamboat Springs city manager is recovering after a skydiving accident in which he avoided hitting a 30-foot building only to fall after getting tangled with a TV antennae.
The accident happened Saturday near Perris, Calif., during a formation skydive that Jon Roberts took with his son and six other people. Roberts told The Steamboat Pilot & Today on Thursday that he had trouble finding the rip cord to deploy his parachute.
He said when the reserve parachute finally opened, there was a 30-foot building in front of him. Roberts said he managed to steer himself over the building but his parachute got tangled with a TV antennae on top of it.
“At that point, I dropped,” Roberts told the newspaper in a phone interview from his hospital room at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.
Firefighters told Roberts he fell 30 feet and damaged a segment of his aorta, a blood vessel connected to the heart.
Roberts was in serious condition but has been upgraded to fair.
He told the newspaper that he’s “eager to get back home and get back to work.”
He also said he’s not counting out going skydiving again.
“I hope I don’t let this discourage me from going again,” he said.
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Information from: Steamboat Pilot & Today,
