"We Were Too Afraid To Get Tattoos, So We Went Skydiving"

A woman who survived her own near-fatal experience as her friend plummeted to her death in a skydiving accident told a Canadian board of inquiry Monday that their instructors should have put more emphasis on the dangers of the sport.

"In the back of our minds we knew things could get bad, but it never occurred to us how bad," said Narisha Shariff Jindani. "We were so excited about skydiving and being together. We just went through the motions."

Jinandi spent more than a month in intensive care following the 1998 accident. During the jump, her canopy spun out of control. She said her risers were tangled from the very moment she left the aircraft and the parachute was activated by a static line. The right toggle became stuck.

"Before I knew it, I was spiralling and the next thing I (remember) I was waking up in the ambulance," Jindani testified via closed circuit television from San Diego.

Jindani's friend, Nadia Kanji, who was an 18-year old student at Magill University, died after she discarded her failed main chute and activated her reserve -- less than 150 feet above the ground.

Simon Wurz watched Kanji's fatal plunge. "I thought maybe the diver was trying maneuvers to get close to the ground, but then I realized the diver had no control," he testified. The emergency chute finally began to deploy. But as the diver dropped below the horizon, Wurz said the emergency parachute collapsed as well. "I realized she must have hit the ground."

Both Kanji and Jindani were diving at the Calgary Skydive Ranch near Beiseker, Alberta. Five people have died in skydiving accidents there since 1989. Transport Canada has investigated fatalities there before, but has so far not issued any mandatory findings.

"This is an extreme sport," said Robert Burgener, an attorney for the skydiving ranch. "You can be killed. You can be seriously injured and you're responsible for your own self to some degree with respect to your reserve handle. You cannot be pulling that at 150 feet."

Burgener suggested that the skydiving operation may not have been at fault. Instead, he said the blame may rest with the two women.

"The concern is, were they not paying attention? I don't know that, and the judge has to make a ruling on whether or not that's a possibility," he said.

FMI: www.tc.gc.ca/en/menu.htm