Eldon Burrier, a 48-year-old skydiving instructor from Washington killed in a Cape Cod accident Sunday, was apparently no stranger to life-threatening acts.
Four years before the tandem jump that killed Burrier and student Andrew Munson of Nantucket, Burrier was rescued after dangling overnight from a rock 600 feet above the ground after BASE jumping off a mountain, the Seattle Times reported.
The then-44-year-old landscaper and former Army paratrooper refused medical treatment. He was subsequently arrested for reckless endangerment on an outstanding warrant for a separate parachuting incident.
According to the report, Burrier had been cited earlier in 2010 for jumping from the Deception Pass Bridge and parachuting to the shoreline at a time when park rangers said there was heavy boat traffic.
Rangers were reportedly concerned for the safety of other people in the area.
But 2010 was apparently not the start of Burrier's proclivity for danger. Back in 2004, the New York Times interviewed him while he was partaking in the "Pond Swooping Nationals" in Gardiner, New York.
"I'm a speed freak and this is a serious taste of speed," Burrier, then 38, told the paper. "Swooping is like doing a high dive, but with a parachute."
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The story described swooping as an "extreme form of high-speed, high-performance parachuting."
According to the New York Times, Burrier served as a paratrooper in the 1980s, when he began jumping conventionally, but started swooping three years before the event.
In Burrier's final jump, he and Munson missed the intended landing spot at Cape Cod Airfield, falling onto the garage of a home across the street.
NECN will have more on the tragic accident as this story develops.
