An Omaha skydiver is lucky to be alive after a jump gone wrong.
It was When Abbey Lacy set out Saturday for her first solo skydive, little did she know that she would have to be rescued from a tree. Lacy tells 6 News that she had a hard time hearing her radio, which caused her to panic and pull on the breaks. That's where it all went wrong. "I panicked 'cause I saw the tree line getting closer, and I braked and went down and I knew I was going to hit the tree."
Lacy is no skydiving novice. She's tandem jumped many times before. "I'm just a bad driver, so it's fine..." Lacy joked.
After Saturday's jump, she landed 70 feet up in the trees in Weeping Water, and the rescue would take three and a half hours. "OK I'm hanging on to this tree. I'm not broken. I'm not bleeding. I'm fine. My first thought was I'm not going to let this stop me from doing it again. Get me out of this tree and I'm going to try again."
She radioed for help. Several agencies came to her aid, but had difficulties getting to her. "Because of where I was they couldn't get ladders tall enough to get to me and the fire trucks couldn't get to the tree to get those tall ladders up."
The crews had to use chainsaws to cut away big portions of the tree. "And they were able to get that ladder up there. They sent two guys up and got it right under me and they had to cut me off my parachute so I could fall down on the ladder."
Once out of the tree, Lacy was checked out by EMS and taken to Nebraska Medicine with just minor injuries. "All of these perfectly good strangers, people I don't even know, went above and beyond. I literally can't thank them enough."