Woman Falls To Her Death In Hang-Gliding Accident, Instructor Arrested

May 8, 2012 at 10:47 am by Morbid  

Vancouver, BC, Canada – Witnesses watched in horror as a woman plunged 1,000 feet to her death while taking her first hang-gliding lesson.

According to reports, 27-year-old Lenami Godinez-Avila and her boyfriend David were at Mount Woodside in the Fraser Valley waiting for their turn to fly in tandem with an instructor on a hang-glider. The couple was there after David purchased hang-gliding lessons as part of their anniversary celebrations.

Both got suited up and Godinez-Avila was paired with Jon Orders, an instructor with 16 years experience. She went before David, who was filming the event, but witnesses say that immediately after taking off they could tell something was not right.

Normally when flying with an instructor, you are beside them, strapped into a harness that was hooked to the glider. But in this case, Godinez-Avila was hanging vertically with her feet dangling. She used her upper body to hold on at first, before getting Orders into a bear hug as he tried to wrap his legs around her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t hold on.

“I could see her starting to slip down his body … past the waist, down the legs.…