A 35-year-old skydiving instructor was killed Saturday after he was "presumed to have fallen from the sky without a parachute," Tennessee police said.
The instructor has been identified as Justin Robert Fuller of Murfreesboro, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement to NBC News.
"Fuller and a 46-year-old student became stuck on the side of the plane in a tandem rig. Fuller became separated from the rig and fell from the sky," the statement said.
"The student’s emergency parachute deployed and he became lodged in a tree" off Ashland City Highway, where Nashville officials spotted and rescued him.
Later Saturday, a police helicopter crew “found the 35-year-old instructor, deceased, in the clearing of a wooded area off Ashland City Highway,” the police department said in an update Saturday night.
The incident involved a jump coordinated by Go Skydive Nashville, the company said in a statement. It lamented the "tragic loss of life" and said it is cooperating with the investigation.
The second skydiver was found "lodged in a tree with an open parachute in the woods in the 4500 block of Ashland City Highway,” the police department said.
The Nashville Fire Department posted photos of the rescue on X. It said rescuers used "several" ladders to reach the skydiver, who was “awake, alert & in stable condition after being suspended for hours" and was brought down via a pulley system.
Go Skydive Nashville’s website lists several requirements that its tandem instructors must meet, stating that they “are highly trained ... professionals” certified by the United States Parachute Association who “must undergo extensive training and certification before even attempting a tandem skydive with a real student.”
The company website says its tandem skydiving gear is regularly inspected and "meticulously maintained."
“Your instructor wears two parachutes, a big, stable main parachute and a reserve parachute. You wear a specially-designed tandem skydiving harness that securely attaches you to your instructor,” it says, noting that main and reserve parachutes, as well as other gear, go through "stringent checks before each jump."
The USPA says only 9 out of 3.88 million reported skydives in 2024 resulted in civilian deaths, a record low since recordkeeping began in 1961.
Most skydiving accidents, the group says, are caused by "simple human error."
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating, police said. In response to an emailed request for more information Sunday night, an automatic reply noted “limited communications” amid the federal government shutdown.
