Four weeks after a horrific hang-gliding crash killed two people in LaSalle County, one victim’s family is demanding answers.
Jeremiah Thompson was killed Sept. 3 while on a tandem hang glider, learning the hobby from Arlan Birkett, owner of Sheridan-based Hang Glide Chicago.
An airplane towed the hang glider into the air, with plans to reach 3,000 feet before the cable was released and their tandem hang glide began, an attorney said.
But 200 feet into that ascent, the cable snapped, and the hang glider plummeted to the ground, smashing to pieces and instantly killing Thompson and Birkett.
On Wednesday, Thompson’s family filed a negligence lawsuit against the company, demanding unspecified damages but also hoping to find out how the crash happened.
“They’re 200 feet in the air, and while normally they would glide to the ground, this hang glider nose-dived to the ground,” attorney Matthew Rundio said. “We need to find out why that happened.”
Rundio is now collecting witness accounts of the crash, including a possible videotape of it happening.
Thompson’s family said, in his obituary, that he died in “the last of a series of lessons” with Birkett.
Birkett, 47, had been hang gliding since 1987, according to his obituary, and was certified by the U.S. Hang Gliding Association as an advanced hang-glider pilot and as a tandem instructor.
Thompson, 32, was a Montana native who came to Chicago to work as a computer programmer at Epiphany Capital Management. For more info like this, please visit our website.
In his obituary, his family said he was a member of the U.S. ski team and was nominated as a Rhodes Scholar before graduating from Dartmouth College.