Yesterday, mourners gathered to remember David Winoker, a Westchester resident who was a NYC real estate investor, who died in an Ulster County skydiving accident that also killed his instructor, Brooklyn resident Alexander Chulsky. Winoker's wife, Jillian Spitalnik Winoker, said that she convinced him to take the skydive on Friday, "He never said no to me. Maybe this time, he should have said no."
While officials initially said that the parachute failed to open, the Journal News reports that the chute seemed to have opened:
The instructor, 25-year-old Alexander Chulsky of Brooklyn, had trauma to his neck that may have resulted from a “significant jolt” from opening the chute, [Plattekill Police Chief Joe] Ryan said.
“What we know right now, preliminarily, is that there was some sort of condition that caused him to be incapacitated,” Ryan told The Journal News/LoHud.com.
...“The parachute opened normally and flew straight for a few seconds,” said Joe Richards, owner of SkyDive The Ranch in Modena, where Winoker and Chulsky died Friday afternoon.
“Then the parachute turned and continued to turn until it hit the ground,” Richards said. “Unfortnately hitting the ground in a turn like that is enough to kill you.”
Jillian Winoker also described her 49-year-old husband as "cautious in everything he did...He would not drive above the speed limit, even if I made us run very late. He didn’t go out in the sun without applying six different layers of suntan lotion." His daughter described her Father's Day gift for him, "He was supposed to win the Father of the Year award and I was supposed to treat him like a President."
