A 27-year-old US firefighter died on Sunday after his wingsuit failed during a Base jump from a 213m perch in northern Utah, authorities said.
The man, Gabe Reilly, was with a group of eight to 10 people before he jumped in a mountainous area east of Millville Canyon in Cache County, according to chief deputy Doyle Peck of the Cache County Sheriff’s Office.
Emergency crews responded just after 9am to a report of an accident that involved a Base jumper, the Sheriff’s Office said. Reilly was “experienced in this type of activity,” Peck said, but on this jump “something went wrong and he did not have enough lift with his wingsuit”.
Reilly hit the ground “at a high rate of speed resulting in his death,” Peck said.
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A flight medical crew removed his body from the area.
The Salt Lake City Fire Department said in a social media post on Monday that Reilly had worked for the department for four years. He had followed “in the footsteps of his father,” who retired from the department in 2024.
Peck said that the area where the accident took place, which is more than 70km north of Ogden, Utah, along the Idaho border, is popular for Base jumping, a high-risk sport that involves parachuting off buildings, bridges, cliffs and other surfaces. (BASE stands for “buildings, antennas, spans and earth”.)
The tragedy came months after two people were killed in Base jumps in southeastern Utah. Danny Joe Kregle and Andrew Lewis died during a jump at a canyon in Grand County, Utah, on June 14, the authorities said at the time. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
