Stephanie Eggum in a Facebook photo uploaded on June 4, 2013.
Stephanie Eggum, 32, a professional sky diver from Elgin died while sky diving about 1:30 p.m. Thursday in Dayton Township, near Ottawa.
LaSalle County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to the scene in a cornfield where they found Eggum. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eggum took off from Skydive Chicago, a skydiving center with instructors for students and facilities for experienced skydivers.
Stephanie was injured in a skydiving accident in 2001 and suffered a concussion. She stopped skydiving, and participated in drag racing, but then resumed skydiving.
Eggum was killed while practicing for a group jump involving 40 to 50 skydivers, who were linking hands and descending headfirst in a vertical dive. The practice involved a separation of the linked skydiver, followed by an individual dive. As she descended, she cut her main parachute for an unknown reason. She deployed her reserved chute, but the altitude was too low for the reserve chute to decelerate her fall safely.
On the company’s YouTube channel there are over 1900 videos — many are videos of participants’ jumps. Some jumps are from an altitude of about 13,500 and describe descent speeds at 120 mph.
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