skies were blue over the Lodi Parachute Center as Francine Turner and her son, Tyler, 18, arrived with his two best friends. It was Saturday morning, Aug. 6, 2016, and the three boys were there to celebrate their high school graduation with their first skydiving experience before heading to UC Merced together in the fall.
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The day before, over lunch, the boys had half-joked about their chutes not opening. Now, a few minutes before boarding the plane, Francine joined them in the hangar that sits just off Highway 99, a few miles north of Stockton in California’s Central Valley. Francine said that the boys were shown a safety video at the same time as they received safety waivers to read and sign, making it impossible to focus on both. She also recalled the boys being ushered into the next room for a harness fitting before the video was over.
“It was hurried and rushed, and seemed very lackadaisical for something that is, you know, your life,” Francine told SFGATE in July last year.
The boys were signed up for tandem jumps — a kind of ride-along that allows novice parachutists to fly through the air while harnessed to an experienced skydiver. Tyler was paired with Yong Kwon, a 25-year-old who had moved from South Korea two months earlier and spoke very little Englishman
Francine spent a few extra dollars to have a videographer fly up with the boys and film the dive. Then she said goodbye to her son. “He gave me a big hug and said, ‘I love you,’” Francine said. Before boarding the plane, Tyler knelt and said a little prayer on the runway. It was the last time his mother saw him alive.
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