Skydive that killed 2 was birthday gift to NLV grandmother

Staff and wire reports

Published Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 | 8:25 a.m.

Updated Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 | 12:19 p.m.

Mesquite Police said a parachute error on Sunday led to the deaths of two skydivers, including a North Las Vegas grandmother who was jumping as part of a birthday gift.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified the victims as 75-year-old Claudette Porter, of North Las Vegas, and 60-year-old James Fonnesbeck, of Weston, Idaho, who had nearly 11,000 jumps over 40 years. Fonnesbeck was among those who jumped from an airplane dressed as Elvis Presley in the movie "Honeymoon in Vegas."

Officer Jeffrey Smith said police responded at 11:57 a.m. to the Mesquite Municipal Airport after the accident.

Porter and Fonnesbeck, her tandem skydiving instructor, died after their parachute failed to deploy correctly, Smith said. The pair jumped from a plane operated by Skydive Mesquite, but the main parachute apparently didn’t open, Smith said.

The instructor deployed a reserve parachute, but it became tangled in the main parachute, police said.

“It slowed them down to an extent but not enough,” Smith said.

Emergency medical crews pronounced Fonnesbeck dead at the scene, Smith said. Porter was taken to Mesa View Hospital, where she later died.

Porter's husband, Jim Porter, told The Associated Press that his wife had been looking forward to the jump arranged by his granddaughter as a gift for her birthday. He said he accompanied his wife on the excursion along with several family members.

"Things like that happen once in a while and there's just not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it," Porter said.

He said his wife had been talking about skydiving for at least 20 years.

Skydive Mesquite owner Brad Jessey said he was still trying to figure out why the parachute malfunctioned, especially given Fonnesbeck's decades of experience as a diver and instructor.

"I mean, the one thing we all said about him was, `You know, he won't die skydiving,'" Jessey told the Associated Press. "Well, somehow it happened, and I have no idea how."

Jessey noted Fonnesbeck was among the team of skydiving Elvis impersonators in the 1992 film "Honeymoon in Vegas," starring Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office collected the parachute rigging and will be working with the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the accident, Smith said. FAA spokesman Mike Fergus in Renton, Wash., said investigators were looking into whether the parachutes had been properly inspected before the jump, and were also checking on the Cessna 206 airplane and its flying route.

He said federal rules require chutes to be inspected every six months. Backup chutes are required to be packed before jumps by an FAA-certified parachute rigger, while main chutes must be packed with at least the supervision of a certified rigger, Fergus said.