The British Army’s famous Red Devils parachute display team lost its sergeant major when he fell to his death during a training exercise in Spain on Friday. When Sgt. Dean Walton fell 3,500 feet to his death, his lines got tangled with another jumper’s chute, which sent him into a hard spin and caused his canopy to break.
After crashing at the drop zone and getting immediate medical care, Walton, an experienced skydiver who had done about 2,000 jumps, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Nimsdai Purja, 39, a well-known mountaineer from Nepal whose chute hit Walton’s, talked about what happened.
“Dean and I were practicing how to move and stack canopies,” Purja, who is 39 years old, wrote on Facebook. “We left the plane at 15,000 feet, and by 3,500 feet we were under good canopies. Dean came up and was directly behind and above him at 45 degrees.”
“This required strong brakes to stay in place, and it is thought that this is why Dean’s canopy stalled and collapsed, sending him through my canopy and tying him up in my lines.”
He said that the situation threw them both into a “severe spin” and “greatly increased the rate at which we fell.”
“I had no choice but to cut away and pull my reserve at this point,” he said.
Purja said that Walton’s canopy started to fall much faster than his because it was inflated. By the time he got to the ground, he had “serious injuries.” “I tried to save his life, but his injuries were so bad that I couldn’t bring him back to life,” he wrote. “I’m heartbroken about Dean’s death. He was very skilled and loved what he did.
SNBC13 says that his wife Shelby Walton and their daughter Stella, who is one year old, will miss him.
Walton spent at least 17 years in the British Army, where he was sent to Afghanistan four times. He loved to surf and see the world. Walton’s LinkedIn page says that he set up parachute demonstrations and training exercises for the Red Devil team.
According to their website, the Red Devils put on about 60 public shows a year, both at home and abroad. Walton was on the team that jumped into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. This is one of the jumps that Walton remembers most.
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