Thousands watch as parachutist plummets to death

[Haole Girl]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/21/bridge.death.ap/index.html

POSTED: 10:24 p.m. EDT, October 21, 2006

FAYETTEVILLE, West Virginia (AP) -- Thousands of people watched a parachutist jump to his death from a bridge during a festival Saturday when his chute opened too late, a sheriff said.

Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered when he hit the water 876 feet below the New River Gorge Bridge during West Virginia's annual Bridge Day festival, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird.

Schubert, from Alta Loma, California, had been well known in the sport of BASE jumping since 1966, when he and a friend became the first people to jump from El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot-tall rock formation, in California's Yosemite National Park. (Watch sheriff give details of accident and scenes of the event -- 2:31)

[davepc]

1. BASE jumping is inherently risky

shame that he died, but he knew the risks.

[DesertRat]

2. What a horrible thing to witness. n/t

[Lasher]

3. Wow, I'm glad I didn't go this year.

Hate it for Schubert's family. He was still at it at age 66, anyway.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. When I worked on that thing and looked waaaaaay down there

every day at New river and all them big rocks, I had a feeling that if you fell off of there it would probably hurt like hell, when you hit the ground at about 120 mph. So I was very careful not to take the plunge! Now I know why!