A skydiving instructor who used someone else’s credentials to train people in tandem jumping at a troubled facility near Lodi, Calif., was sentenced this week to two years in prison.
The instructor, Robert Pooley, 49, was convicted in May of wire fraud after using another instructor’s digital signature on paperwork that allowed him to train and certify students in tandem skydiving, which involves an experienced sky diver jumping with a novice, the authorities said. In 2016, one of Mr. Pooley’s students died along with a first-time sky diver, after their parachutes failed to open.
That episode placed renewed scrutiny on the center where he worked, which is now known as the Skydive Lodi Parachute Center. The facility, about 30 miles south of Sacramento, in San Joaquin County, has been the site of more than two dozen deaths since 1985, including the 2016 deaths of Yong Kwon, 25, Mr. Pooley’s student, and Tyler Turner, 18, a first-time jumper who died in a tandem leap with Mr. Kwon.
Mr. Pooley has not been charged in connection with either man’s death. He has also not been alleged to have had any involvement in the other deaths at the facility. In an emailed statement, lawyers for Mr. Pooley told The New York Times that the court had made it clear during the sentencing hearing on Monday that it did not find Mr. Pooley legally responsible for the deaths.
Mr. Pooley’s arrest in 2021 came several years after the deaths of the Mr. Kwon and Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner’s mother, Francine Turner, said in a telephone interview that it was “significant” to see Mr. Pooley, who she believed played a role in her son’s death, go to prison. Ms. Turner, who filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Parachute Center, said in the interview that she wished that the authorities could have also gone after the facility’s founder, William Dause, who she said had largely escaped responsibility despite the many deaths at his skydiving outfit.
On Friday, Mr. Dause picked up the phone at Skydive Lodi Parachute Center, which remains open. “It has nothing to do with me,” he said of Mr. Pooley’s case. “We haven’t had near as many fatalities as other facilities, even in California — some of the bigger ones,” he added, when asked about the deaths at his center.
“There’s a term, ‘cherry picking.’ What you’re doing is lemon picking,” he added. “Just looking at the bad stuff.”
In Ms. Turner’s wrongful-death suit, Mr. Dause was ordered in 2021 to pay her family $40 million. Ms. Turner said this week that she had not yet received any payment.
Mr. Dause, 81, declined to comment further beyond saying that the center had been in operation since the 1960s and at its present location since 1981. In the past, Mr. Dause has pointed out that skydiving is inherently risky.
Defenders of the sport say deaths are extremely rare: Last year, a total of 10 civilian skydiving deaths were reported to the United States Parachute Association, out of a total reported 3.65 million jumps.
No federal or California state agency regulates skydiving. The Federal Aviation Administration oversees planes and pilots, but it has limited oversight of skydiving itself; federal authorities largely depend on the U.S.P.A., an industry organization with members across the country, to ensure that facilities meet safety requirements and that all instructors are certified, and to track accidents.
Membership in the organization is voluntary, however, and according to The Sacramento Bee, the center near Lodi has never been a member.
People who choose to sky-dive are commonly asked to sign waivers, which may shield operators from some liability.
Mr. Turner and Mr. Kwon met the day they died: Aug. 6, 2016. That day, Ms. Turner accompanied her son and two of his friends on a celebration of their recent graduation from high school and their upcoming move to college.
The center, off Highway 99 in the agricultural outskirts of Lodi, was marked by wooden signs that appeared to be hand-painted and had faded with time.
There, the young men were rushed through a safety video while being asked to sign waivers at the same time, Ms. Turner said in her lawsuit and in an interview.
She hugged her son goodbye. His friends soon returned, but he was nowhere to be found, she said. Mr. Turner’s body was later found in a vineyard along with the instructor’s, Mr. Kwon.
Mr. Kwon had only recently arrived in the United States from his native South Korea. Investigators soon found that he had not been officially certified, nor was he properly trained to lead tandem jumps in the United States.
According to a statement released this week by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California, “the signed documents that Pooley provided some of the students led them to believe they were certified to conduct tandem sky-dives with members of the public.” In fact, Mr. Pooley’s certification had been suspended in 2015.
Mr. Pooley’s lawyers said that they believed the Parachute Center was complicit, adding that it had benefited financially from Mr. Pooley’s courses and that the center’s management knew that Mr. Pooley was no longer an “examiner” but facilitated his continued teaching — a claim they also made in their sentencing memorandum to the court. They said they plan to appeal “as serious questions remain as to whether Rob Pooley’s conduct was criminal and whether his sentence was fair.”
When asked about the accusation of complicity, Mr. Dause said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ms. Turner said she had the opportunity to speak at Mr. Pooley’s sentencing about the trauma of her son’s skydiving death. As she spoke, she was flanked by four of his friends, she said, including the two who had jumped out of the plane with him.
According to The Sacramento Bee, which published an investigation of the center in 2023, a total of 28 people have died in skydiving-related incidents at the center over the past four decades. Five of those deaths took place after Mr. Turner and Mr. Kwon died.
Some victims were new to the sport like Mr. Turner, while others were seasoned sky divers like Sabrina Call, 57, who died in 2021 after her main parachute and her backup tangled in the air.
While a few deaths were suspected suicides and one involved a medical issue, ten were linked to equipment problems, according to The Sacramento Bee, which reviewed county death investigations, federal incident reports and news accounts. Several involved entangled chutes.
In 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Tyler’s Law, which is named after Mr. Turner, to hold skydiving operations responsible for ensuring that their instructors are fully qualified. But Ms. Turner said the government should do more to make sure those who go skydiving are protected — including at the center near Lodi.
She said she hoped that Mr. Pooley’s sentencing was just a first step. “This is just one piece,” she said. “We’ll see what comes next.”
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