Paratrooper Dies After Accident

A Special Operations paratrooper died this afternoon after a jump went wrong and he landed in a lake at Gadsden Park.

Air Force Col. Larry Martin said the soldier was participating in parachute training. He would not identify the U.S. Army paratrooper.

The training is a normal operation that goes on every few weeks at MacDill Air Force Base, Martin said.

The incident in under investigation and the 6th Air Mobility Wing has convened an interim safety board to collect evidence, officials say.

Because of the ongoing investigation, Martin declined to comment on how Thursday's training session went awry.

A Tampa firefighter fishing with a friend on a lake adjacent to Gadsden Park said he noticed a group of about 10 paratroopers in the bright blue sky about 9:30 a.m. The soldiers appeared to be headed for MacDill, which abuts the lake, city firefighter Matthew Martinez said.

Within moments, something seemed wrong.

"One was off course," Martinez said.

Martinez, 29, and his friend Joe Cordes, 26, watched as one of the paratroopers cleared a power line by lifting his legs.

"Wow, he's going in the drink," Cordes recalled thinking.

Tampa Fire Rescue said the paratrooper was transported to Tampa General Hospital in "very critical" condition. He later died.

"It's hard on us service members," Martin said. "We feel we have a bond that goes together for all of us, as service members, and especially for our partners here at Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command."

About 10:10 a.m., Tampa police diver Scotty MacLean found the paratrooper unconscious in about 20 feet of water, roughly 20 yards off shore, officials said.

Martinez and Cordes, standing in soaked T-shirts and shorts, describing how they had seen the man swimming away from his parachute before he slipped below the surface. They dove into the lake to find him, without success.

"Neither of us thought in a million years he wasn't going to make it," Martinez said.

Tampa Fire Rescue Capt. Bill Wade said the other jumpers landed safely.

Port Tampa resident Tim Parker, 48, who went over to the lake after hearing the police sirens, said he notices paratroopers landing at the base every two to three days.

"They parachute all the time around here," Parker said. "You see them come down on the runway and stuff. This is the first time I've ever seen this happen."

Martinez and Cordes, a Fort Lauderdale videographer, said the paratrooper entered the water about 100 yards from their canoe. He surfaced and started to swim away from the parachute, they said.

The friends began paddling over to help him, thinking they'd have a laugh with him once they reached him, Martinez said.

With their canoe about 20 feet away, the paratrooper sank, they said.

"We saw bubbles and ditched the canoe," Martinez said.

They tried to find the man but couldn't see him.

"It was pretty cold," Martinez said of the water.

Wade estimated the water temperature in the upper 50s. The lake is about 10 to 12 acres in size and about 22 feet deep where the paratrooper landed.

Visibility is poor, roughly about one foot, Wade said.

Depending on the altitude when he began and the wind conditions, the paratrooper might have been blown off course, said Tampa resident Reggie Hines, 40, who served as an Airborne Army medic from 1987 to 1994. He now works as a respiratory therapist at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Hines was stationed in Anchorage, Ala., and said training for combat jumps is typically at 1,500 to 3,000 feet.

"You have seconds to do everything you need to do," he said. "The wind conditions always change. ... That happened to me, when you get completely blown off course. Then you're looking at trees and water."

Hines said he never wore a flotation device on his 37 jumps because he was carrying a spare chute, a rucksack, a weapon and snow shoes.