Parachutist Seriously Injured in Cocoa Beach Skydiving Santa Event

By Orlando Personal Injury Attorney on December 18, 2019

Due to its temperate weather, Florida remains a home or a destination to many people looking to engage in outside activities during the winter months. Skydiving, one of humanity’s more extreme pastimes, is one of those activities. Which is why it is somewhat fitting that every year Cocoa Beach hosts an event called Skydiving Santas.

As the name implies, Skydiving Santas features dozens of skydiving enthusiasts dressed in their holiday best—or, we should say, in Santa’s holiday best. So outfitted, they leap from planes, free falling for hundreds of feet before deploying their parachutes and flowing safely to the ground.

At least, that’s what is supposed to happen.

The Skydiving Santas event that took place within Cocoa Beach this year had its joy somewhat marred by an incident which remains under investigation but resulted in at least one of the Santas suffering from numerous injuries after their dive went against the expectations. At the time of this writing, not much is known about the circumstances relating to the incident, which took place on Sunday, December 15th, inside the city of Cocoa Beach.

Reports from the Cocoa Beach Fire Department indicated that the dive was going well for the vast majority of participants when one of the Santas experienced either some sort of equipment malfunction or unexpected weather event. Again, just what it was that caused the accident is not clear, but we do know that when this individual hit the ground they did so in such a way as to suffer from severe injuries to their pelvis as well as elsewhere along their lower body.

The individual, who was not named in the preliminary reports, was taken via helicopter from the area of the incident to a trauma center located at Holmes Regional Medical Center. It is not known if the swift medical intervention was enough to remove the man from a life-threatening situation.

At the time of this writing, the incident remains under investigation. It is hoped that there will soon be an answer as to just what happened to cause such an alarming equipment failure and bodily injury to the skydiver in question.

Sources:

• Skydiving Santa injured in hard landing on Cocoa Beach

James O. Cunningham

Since 1977, personal injury lawyer James Cunningham has provided effective legal advocacy to people who are injured through the negligent actions of another person or entity throughout the Central Florida area. He fights to obtain recoveries for his clients’ physical and emotional pain and suffering and pursues his clients’ personal injury cases with a commitment to excellence and impeccable preparation.