Extreme athlete Baumgartner’s death in paragliding crash was due to human error, inquiry finds

MILAN (AP) — The paragliding crash that killed extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner in July was caused by human error, an investigating prosecutor said Tuesday.

Baumgartner, the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound, died July 17 along Italy’s Adriatic coast. Witnesses said the flight appeared normal until it started spinning to the ground, crashing near the swimming pool of a beachside resort.

Prosecutor Raffaele Iannella said the investigation found no technical issues with Baumgartner’s motorized paraglider.

“He fell into a spiral, and he could not get out. He was unable to do the maneuver that he should have done to exit” from the fall, Iannella told The Associated Press. German news agency dpa first reported the results of the prosecutor’s report, which was finalized in recent days.

The prosecutor will now request that the case be closed, which will require a judge’s approval.

Known as “Fearless Felix,” Baumgartner stunned the world in 2012 when he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted more than 24 miles (39 kilometers) above Earth by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

The Austrian, who was part of the Red Bull Stratos team, topped out at 843.6 mph — the equivalent of 1.25 times the speed of sound — during a nine-minute descent. At one point, he went into a potentially dangerous flat spin while still supersonic, spinning for 13 seconds, his crew later said.