Basejumper.com - archive

Parachuters jump into trouble
By Dana Herra - Staff Writer

WATERMAN - A pair of thrill-seekers landed themselves in the county jail Tuesday after parachuting from a communications tower near Waterman.

An area farmer called police around 7 p.m. after reportedly watching Patrick R. Walker, 22, of Holland, Mich., and Nicolas Banjac, 22, of Switzerland, jump the fence to the tower enclosure and begin climbing the 300-foot tower, which is owned by Union Pacific.

Chief Deputy Kevin Hickey of the DeKalb County Sheriff's Police said that police first thought the men were planning to steal copper parts from the top of the tower. Three men were arrested last fall for climbing another tower in the same area to scavenge for the metal.

“We responded under the assumption that could be what was going on,” Hickey said. “Then just before we arrived we got another call from the farmer that they had jumped off the tower with parachutes.”

Police arrived at the tower just as the two men were leaving. The men were charged with disorderly conduct, and the sheriff's office and Union Pacific are continuing to investigate the incident.

Hickey said Banjac is in the country on a 60-day visitor's visa, which he speculated could be cut short. He said Walker is an experienced skydiver who also has jumped from cliffs and bridges, and was apparently introducing Banjac to the sport.

“Apparently they like the thrill of jumping off of high things,” Hickey said. “In DeKalb County we don't have a lot of tall natural structures, so I guess they decided a tower would do.”

Using a parachute to jump from a fixed object is commonly known as “BASE jumping.” BASE stands for the four types of objects a person can jump from: buildings; antenna towers; spans, such as bridges and arches; and earth, meaning cliffs or rock formations. The sport is statistically more dangerous than parachuting from an airplane and is generally considered a fringe sport, according to online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Dana Herra can be reached at dherra@daily-chronicle. com.

When you are practising "...disorderly conduct" you deserve nothing less than to get your visa cut short. Dooh, Noot

Keep the play running dudes

Sunset at 8.04PM their local time.

Not knowing the remoteness of the object and any other details I will dare to speculate that jumping it at night would of solved all the problems.

are you so bored as to look into local sunset times and yell at naughty base jumpers. you need to heal soon so we can go jump off an a ourselves. its getting lonely doing solo climbs. oh and yes i am bored at work. that is why im writing.

my thought is maybe they should bring the farmer beer ahead of time like we do so they know were friendly and not out to steel anything. well now that i think of it we just have a cool farmer.