His Daughter, A Passenger In The Tandem Rig, Survives With Minor Injuries

A paraglider pilot flying a tandem rig was fatally injured last Sunday when he fell about 3,000 feet from the aircraft.

Television station KEYT and other media sources report that the pilot, identified as Ronald Faoro of Santa Barbara, was paragliding with his teenage daughter in the area of La Cumbre Peak when the accident occurred. John Greynald of the Santa Barbara Soaring Association told the television station that Faoro apparently had not strapped himself in properly, and "he managed to stay airborne for a few minutes, but apparently had some complications and fell from the paraglider."

Greynald said it was the first fatal accident in the Santa Barbara paragliding community since the 1970s.

Faoro's daughter was reportedly not an experienced paraglider pilot, and after watching her father fall, impacted a tree in Rattlesnake Canyon. A hiker caught the entire incident on a video camera. Geology students from UC Santa Barbara who were hiking in the canyon also assisted in the rescue effort.

The teenager was airlifted by a helicopter out of the canyon and transported to a hospital with minor injuries.

(Single-person paraglider pictured in file photo)

FMI: http://sbsa.info/