A tragic skydiving accident near Nashville resulted in the death of an instructor and the treacherous rescue of a student caught in a tree this past Saturday. According to a report by WKRN, the Nashville Fire Department and Metro Nashville Police Department were dispatched to the scene near the 4500 block of Ashland City Highway after the instructor and student became separated from a tandem skydiving rig.
Following an intense search, the instructor's body was located in a clearing by an MNPD helicopter crew, as confirmed in a statement obtained by WSMV, who reported that the Federal Aviation Administration has taken over the investigation into the incident. The skydiving student was recovered from the tree after emergency crews used a complicated series of multiple ladders to facilitate the extraction, at which point he was conscious and stable but taken to the hospital as a precaution.
Witness accounts provided a harrowing picture of the scene, "He was suspended in the tree, several, several feet in the air," Nashville Fire Department spokesperson Kendra Loney stated in a quote to FOX 17, detailing the student skydiver's ordeal; a local arborist, Romulus Rood, lent equipment to assist rescuers and recounted the student's declaration that this would be "his first and last jump."
The MNPD has not yet specified how the midair separation occurred, though the instructor is presumed to have fallen from the plane without a parachute, which was a critical failure that led to the fatal outcome of the jump. The surviving student, recovering from his unexpected solo descent, is reportedly doing fine—“awake, alert, oriented,” as added by Loney. Three other skydivers who jumped prior to the incident landed without complications, and the airplane, operated by Go Skydive Nashville, returned safely to John C. Tune Airport, as noted by FOX 17.
