Is this America’s deadliest skydiving center? Spooky video reveals teen’s final moments in central California where 28 people died – and it’s STILL open

“Life goes on,” said the boss of what is known as America’s most dangerous skydiving center.

Over the past 40 years, 28 people who signed up for a skydive from California’s Lodi Parachute Center have fallen to their deaths – including 18-year-old Tyler Turner, SFGoes reported.

The teen’s adventure ended in tragedy in 2016 when his parachute failed to open just minutes after he told his mother he loved her in a haunting final video. It later turned out that his tandem instructor was not licensed.

But while a $40 million judgment was awarded to Turner’s family in 2021, Eight years later, not a cent has been paid and the jumps continue in the center.

The center’s owner, Bill Dause, told DailyMail.com that neither Tyler’s death nor that of the others was his fault. He emphasized that such incidents are “just part of the activity.”

Tyler had joined two friends to celebrate their high school graduation before heading off to college together at UC Merced.

The high school student prayed on the asphalt and told his mother he loved her for the last time before leaving.

“That’s my mom right there,” Tyler said in his final video message.

‘Very loving mother. Has done a lot for me in my life. Most of all, I hope she will help me with more of my life, because I want to make it.”

Moments later, he lay dead in a vineyard next to his tandem instructor and their unopened parachute as the next flight prepared to take off.

Tyler’s mother Francine Salazar arrived in time to see the coroner’s van remove her son’s body, before returning to the center where another excited customer strapped on his parachute.

“I said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it,'” she told SFGate, “You’re leaving your wife and your children without a father.”

She said she yelled at owner Bill Dause and yelled, “What are you doing? Don’t you realize someone just died?’

Twenty-four people had already died in the center north of Stockton by the time Tyler fell.

The youngest was 15-year-old Devon Whittaker, whose parachute failed in April 1993 when he jumped next to his mother.

In 2019, a flight ignored warnings of high winds and took off with 28-year-old Maria Vallejo on board, who was blown across Highway 99 before crash-landing on the roof of a truck.

Three years ago, local woman Sabrina Call died after her primary and emergency parachutes became tangled in midair.

But Dause said “none of the incidents” were related and that the customers who died were “doing their own thing,” despite the verdict against him and other fines against the company.

“(As for) why we’re not shutting it down: Have you been to a football match and seen someone injured being taken away in an ambulance? They don’t close the stadium and send everyone home and go bankrupt,” he told DailyMail.com.

‘It’s just part of the sport, part of the activity. What matters is whether it is an acceptable risk, an individual has to make a decision about that.

‘Have we changed anything? No not really. Because we can’t change anything if all the incidents were different.’

“We’re sad, but it’s like a car accident or something else,” Dause previously told reporters. “You have to keep going.”

There are no official figures recording how many people die in parachute accidents because no agency requires them to be reported.

Jim Crouch of the United States Parachute Association (USPA) explained SacBee he could not remember any other large and busy skydiving center with so many fatalities since 1985.

And while the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigates fatal parachute accidents, it limits itself to verifying that minimum legal requirements have been met and “does not conduct an investigation to determine cause.”

The FAA imposed fines totaling $933,000 on Dause and his company in 2010 and 2011 for regulatory deficiencies, but these were not paid.

Tyler’s instructor, Yong Kwon, 25, had recently arrived from South Korea and was not trained or certified to perform tandem jumps in the US.

In 2016, USPA kicked Dause and company off the registries after discovering that 12 instructors trained there had fake certifications.

But skydiving companies are not required to be registered with USPA, and the deaths continued to pile up.

An analysis by The Bee found that ten were caused by equipment problems, eight involved parachutes becoming tangled with those of other jumpers, and three involved mid-air collisions with other skydivers.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it does not have the authority to order the closure of a skydiving school, but told SFGate, “The FAA has oversight responsibilities and the authority to terminate operations in the interest of safety.”

But the FAA said that’s not true because skydiving companies themselves don’t require certification.

The lack of oversight is made explicit by UPSA, which states on its website: “The FAA and USPA rely on self-regulation from the skydiving community for most training and operational requirements.

“USPA shall have no obligation to any person with respect to his or her skydiving activities,” the information manual warns.

“All references by USPA to self-regulation refer to each individual person who is self-regulating or responsible.”

Tyler’s mother said her son planned to attend UC Merced in the fall to study biochemical engineering because he was born with cerebral palsy and wanted to help others with the condition.

“Before he got on the plane, he knelt down and prayed, made peace with God, then turned around and gave me a big, huge hug,” she added.

“He had an integrity like no other,” she said. ‘Live your life as he would have done. He was an incredible kid.”

Dause, now 81, continues to fly from downtown and says he has no idea how many people have jumped from his planes.

He said Tyler’s death was an accident and that closing the center in the aftermath would have hurt the business. He also accused Tyler’s mother of “contacting every news source” about the tragedy, saying she “stirred the pot because she thinks I could bring someone back or that it was my fault and it wasn’t done right.” .

Dause also previously defended his decision to keep flying after Tyler’s death, telling reporters, “We didn’t stop because life goes on.” There is nothing I could have done differently that would have changed the outcome.

“Yeah, I couldn’t have opened this place. I could have stayed home. I could still be on the farm in Utah.”

During the trial of Tyler’s parents, he suggested that only his own death would stop the flights. When asked what it would take, he said, “Well, other than the sun setting, that would be the stop.”

Dause claimed he only lost the lawsuit because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.

News reports of deaths at his center have also taken a toll on the company, he said.

“COVID-19, that really slowed us down. But since then, all this bad press continues to make news. We used to get a lot of people from England, a lot of people came from Europe, but we still get a lot of bad press for something that the center had nothing to do with, except that it happened here.”