Cuts Through Parachute Rigging

An unidentified British man who deliberately cut through the rigging of his parachute and fell to his death on his first skydiving jump this weekend. reports indicate that he gave no sign that he was distressed enough to commit suicide, according to his instructors.

The 27-year-old man was behaving normally right up to the moment he leapt from the GAF Nomad aircraft (file photo of type, below) Saturday afternoon over Norfolk, England.

According to witnesses, the man's static-lined parachute deployed... but onlookers in the plane and on the ground could only watch in horror as the man then removed his helmet -- equipped with a built-in radio -- and began to cut at the parachute cords with gardening shears.

"If we had been unhappy with his mental state we would not have allowed him to go up," UK Parachuting chief instructor Jason Thompson told the Daily Mirror. "It appears to have been suicide -- he must have planned to kill himself in this way."

Thompson said the man paid for an introductory course at the school, located at an ex-WWII airfield at Old Buckenham, on April 15. Weather precluded a jump on that day -- but the man returned to the school Saturday for his first... and last... jump.

"People on the ground were aware of the situation as he was doing it -- but there was nothing they could do," Thompson added.

FMI: www.ukparachuting.co.uk