London: A 49-year-old woman parachutist died after her chute failed to open and she crash-landed "spinning like a top" in County Durham, UK police said on Sunday.
Witnesses described seeing the woman rapidly spiralling down to earth entangled in the canopy cords of her parachute before landing in a nearby Shotton Colliery housing estate.
The parachutist who crashed into a parked car had been "spinning like a top" as she fell to the ground, The Guardian reported, quoting a witness as saying.
The as-yet-unnamed woman, from Hebburn, South Tyneside, was flown by air ambulance with critical injuries to hospital in Middlesbrough following the incident yesterday afternoon. She later died in intensive care, police said.
The woman had jumped before but not in the UK, Durham Police said.
Detective Inspector Dave Cuthbert said: "This is a tragic incident. The lady who has died was using her own equipment and was making her first sky-dive in this country, having previously made parachute jumps abroad.
Witnesses said the sky diver did not scream during the descent and had her legs and arms open prior to hitting a hatchback car, which was parked outside a detached home on a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of the village, about 400 metres from a skydiving centre based at Shotton airfield.
The dead woman was one of a group of parachutists who had taken off from the nearby airfield, the BBC reported.
The coroner has been informed and a post-mortem examination is due to be carried out on the woman's body.
It is understood residents carried out Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the woman before paramedics arrived at the scene, where she had landed close to a car.
One witness, who did not want to be named, said it did not look like the woman was moving before she hit the car and he thought she was unconscious.
"She was not screaming," he said. "All I can see is her spinning like a top."
He did not see the impact, but later saw the woman on the ground as people tried to help her, after she appeared to have suffered a serious head injury.
Ian Rosenvinger, from the Skydive Academy at Peterlee parachute centre said that the canopy on the woman's parachute rotated round and round, leading to a heavy landing.
