An Oklahoma woman died during a solo skydiving trip after she was in a freak accident, police said.
Heather Glasgow, 44, an avid skydiver and mom of two children, was on a solo skydiving trip at the Sallisaw Airport on Saturday, February 18, when tragedy struck.
According to the Sallisaw Police Department, they were called to the airport on Saturday afternoon with reports of a skydiving accident involving a woman. Witnesses told police Glasgow was skydiving when she started spinning uncontrollably and failed to recover.
The police department released a statement on Facebook saying the parachute had deployed fully, but she kept spinning before hitting the ground.
Responding officers took Glasgow to the Northeastern Health System, where she died at around 8 pm.
Her family described her as a skydiving lover and that she participated in a previous tandem skydive. According to the police statement, Glasgow had attended two jump classes for first-timers at the Adventure Skydive Center.
The cause of the accident is still unknown, but the police said they were working with the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office and the Federal Aviation Administration to determine what happened.
As news of Glasgow’s fatal accident became public, tributes started pouring in on social media, with family and friends mourning her.
Out of over three million skydiving jumps in 2021, there were 10 fatalities, according to the USPA. The 2021 fatalities were the lowest in over 20 years.
In July last year, a 59-year-old woman from Florida died after a parachute malfunction while skydiving in New York.
According to the agency, tandem skydiving is much safer than solo skydiving as a person is attached to an experienced skydiving instructor. Over the past decade, it has had a fatality rate of one person per 500,000 jumps.
