Police in Hualien County are investigating the death of a woman from Chiayi County who fell to the ground from a height of about 10m while paragliding and later succumbed to serious injuries on Saturday.
Fonglin Precinct officers and officials with the Hualien County Department of Education on Sunday inspected the site where the 27-year-old woman, surnamed Hsiao (蕭), was found near the 37km marker of Provincial Highway No. 11.
Police said they have seized the paraglider and launched an investigation after Hsiao’s boyfriend accused the company providing the paragliding services in Hualien of failing to properly secure Hsiao’s safety buckles.
Photo courtesy of police via CNA
The paragliding instructor, surnamed Yeh (葉), who was on the tandem flight with Hsiao when the accident occurred was questioned by prosecutors and released on NT$50,000 bail on Sunday.
Prosecutors have joined the investigation to determine if it was a case of manslaughter, police said.
The accident occurred on Saturday morning when Hsiao was on a tandem flight with Yeh along the Jici coast (磯崎) in Hualien’s Fongbin Township (豐濱).
A video clip provided by Hsiao’s family shows that a safety buckle on Hsiao’s thigh was loose before the two took off.
The paragliding company told reporters that the coach noticed a loosened buckle soon after they took off and tried to fix the problem immediately.
For “unknown reasons,” however, the buckle was disconnected, causing the woman to fall from a height of 10m as they were trying to land, it said.
“When the accident happened, the coach had no time to grab the passenger,” the company said.
Hsiao was found with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest when she was spotted on a small road near the highway and was declared dead after efforts to resuscitate her failed at Hualien Hospital’s Fongbin branch, Fonglin police said.
The Hualien education department said that it has determined that the paragliding instructor was licensed for the sport, but the company providing the service did not have a business permit for paragliding because it failed to meet land and facility requirements.
The company, whose business operations were suspended after the death was reported, also did not have the Civil Aviation Administration’s permission to fly non-powered paragliders, it said.
However, as related regulations do not specify penalties for non-compliance, it is difficult to stop unauthorized business operators from soliciting customers, the department said.
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