Expert Skydiver Filmed His Last Words After Realizing He Jumped From Plane Without Parachute

It's been nearly three decades since a skydiver plummeted to his death in a tragic accident after forgetting to put on his parachute while jumping from a plane. Ivan Lester McGuire was an expert skydiver who died while instructing students, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The 35-year-old from Illinois passed away on April 2, 1988, after the ill-fated dive from an altitude of 10,500 feet. The day McGuire boarded a plane, he was carrying camera equipment on his back and was supposed to film a student and an instructor from the Franklin County Sports Parachute Center in North Carolina, the news outlet reported.

It was reportedly Mcguire's third jump of the day that turned out to be his last, the Mirror reported. In the hauntingly blurry footage, the skydiver can be seen free-falling helplessly after realizing that he had forgotten to put on the most vital equipment needed for a skydive — his parachute. 

McGuire had completed more than 800 successful jumps before his fatal accident. In the video footage, McGuire appears to be attempting to pull his parachute as he inched closer to the ground. That was when he had the terrifying realization that he had forgotten his parachute, the Mirror reported.

McGuire's haunting last words was captured in the footage. He can be heard saying, "Oh my god, No!" His body was recovered one and a half miles away from the airfield from where he took off, LA Times reported.

“We haven’t gotten all the facts yet. But there is a regulation, No. 105, that states that the pilot must check, well, no one may jump unless the pilot checks the parachutes,” FAA inspector Walter Rigsbee said. McGuire may have mistaken the weight of his video equipment on his back for a parachute, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While reviewing the footage at the time, Captain Ralph Brown said that "it kind of appears he reached for his parachute and didn't have one."

"You could only see the instructor and the student falling on the video. But the release for his parachute is on his right hip, and when that right-hand goes down, the left hand goes forward and it comes into camera view. It's kind of boggled in there and it sounded like he may have said, 'Oh no,' right after his left hand came into view," Brown said.

Mark Luman, the pilot of the plane that carried McGuire, was also investigated to find if he had checked if McGuire was wearing his parachute, Mirror reported.

"There is a regulation, No. 105, that states that no one may jump unless the pilot checks the parachutes." Nancy Fayard, the wife of the parachute center's owner Paul Fayard, told the news outlet.

"No one was aware that he got on the plane without a parachute. Of course, no one knew or they would have stopped him," Nancy Fayard said.

Even though it was a tragic death, investigations ruled out foul play or suicidal intent, Daily Star reported, and determined that Mcguire had "simply forgotten to put on his parachute, causing his accidental death."

"I think in the excitement over taping the show, I think he just forgot his parachute. As far as the sheriff’s department is concerned, it was an accident," Captain Brown said about the incident, Essentially Sports reported.