Skydiving accident leaves woman dead in Lebanon Texan’s friends to testify about late ambulance

LEBANON – A Texas woman who died from injuries suffered in a skydiving accident had more than 200 jumps under her belt before she got into trouble and crashed hard onto the ground on Thursday, officials said.

Friends of Zara E. Sunday, 24, of Euless, Texas, planned to make a memorial jump over the weekend, according to Skydive New England, the company that was providing skydiving services to her group.

Many of Sunday’s friends, alarmed by the delayed arrival of an ambulance, agreed to testify at a town meeting about the need for an ambulance in the town, said Assistant Rescue Chief Jason Cole.

Sunday, who had just completed her 200th jump, was making her fourth jump of the day when things went wrong Thursday, Cole said.

She apparently decided to land in a field before she noticed that there were power lines and pulled quickly on a cord to change directions, Cole said. She went into a spiral and hit the ground with a thud loud enough to be heard by a nearby resident who was indoors watching TV, Cole said.

Cole, who was the first rescuer on the scene, waited 20 minutes for an ambulance to come from New Hampshire because Lebanon doesn’t have one. Town voters recently rejected a proposal to spend $7,000 to buy a used ambulance.

Sunday’s friends were frustrated because the ambulance was delayed, and so was Cole. “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he said Friday.

In trauma cases, every minute is important in saving lives, but there’s no way of knowing whether Sunday could have been saved if she had arrived sooner at Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.H., Cole said.

Sunday, who was not wearing a helmet, suffered severe head trauma, internal injuries and a broken hip, ankle and legs, he said.

She was being transferred to a LifeFlight helicopter for transport to the Maine Medical Center, a trauma hospital in Portland, when she went into cardiac arrest. She was pronounced dead, Cole said.

The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the accident and sent a safety inspector to the scene.