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The extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner died on Thursday when his motorized paraglider crashed.
Caroline Seidel/dpa
Initial findings of the investigation indicate that the crash of Baumgartner's motorized paraglider could have been caused by a camera that got caught in the propeller.
Initial findings of the investigation into Baumgartner's death indicate that the cause of the accident was not due to illness after all. This is reported by the Italian newspaper "Il Resto del Carlino".
A rough reconstruction revealed that Baumgartner had installed a camera on his paramotor to film from behind. He is said to have attached it with a cord and then controlled it with a mini-pilot.
Possibly due to a stall or a quick maneuver, the camera is said to have then fallen into the propeller, which ultimately caused the paramotor glider to crash.
Baumgartner is said to have tried to activate the reserve parachute. However, this failed due to the low altitude. This has yet to be confirmed by a technical consultant commissioned by the public prosecutor's office. However, the accident theory is also supported by the statements of two people who saw the paramotor crash and were questioned by the carabinieri who arrived at the scene of the accident.
One tourist told the newspaper: "I saw the paraglider in free fall. It was spinning in a spiral." A local also explained: "When I saw the glider fall, it wasn't far from the ground. I'm an enthusiastic paraglider myself and I don't believe that a sudden illness caused the paraglider to go out of control. A nosedive like the one I saw could only be due to a technical problem."
In the meantime, the Fermo public prosecutor's office has ordered an autopsy after the first autopsy in order to definitively determine the cause of death.
