Felix Baumgartner, Daredevil who jumped from the stratosphere, dies in a paragliding accident at age 56

Felix Baumgartner, the reckless who made a leap of record stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding accident in Italy, confirmed a local mayor. Firefighters who responded to the scene said they found a Paraglider who had crashed on the side of a pool in the city of Porto Sant Elpidio, on the east coast of the center of Italy.

“Our community is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a global prominence figure, a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flight,” said the mayor of the city, Massimiliano Ciarpella, on Facebook. Ciarpella told The News that the extreme athlete had been in the holiday area.

The witnesses told News that they heard a strong boom when the paragliding got out of control. Mirella Ivanov, 30, told AP that she was in the area with her two young children when they saw the paragliding losing control.

“Everything was normal, then it began to turn like a top,” Ivanov said on Friday. “He went down and listened to a roar. In fact, I turned around because I thought he crashed into the rocks.”

Baumgartner, 56, appeared in global headlines In 2012 When he was lifted in the stratosphere, about 24 miles above, in a capsule transported by a helium balloon, and then harden in a landing in New Mexico. During the jump, he broke the record of a faster free fall, descending to approximately 843.6 mph and becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without the help of a vehicle.

Originally from Austria, Baumgartner began to parachute at age 16 and perfected his skills in the Austrian army, according to his personal website. In 1988, he associated with Red Bull, which sponsored the stratosphere jump under the Stratos project and many other daring feats.

Training and planning for the 2012 Jump Stratos took five years. Among the records, Baumgartner would break that day was the highest jump, which had been made by the Captain of the Joe Kittinger Air Force since 1960, when he jumped from a open -air gondola basket that increased to 102,000 feet. Kittinger would go to train Baumgartner for the jump of records record. (Baumgartner’s height record broke two years later).

In addition to paratrooidism, Baumgartner was an consummated base sweater, breaking two records in 1999: higher base jump and lower base jump. The bass jump, which took the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro from the hands of Christ, was only 95 feet. The height jump was taken from the 88th floor of Petronas’s Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, although that record has broken and is currently in the hands of the late Valery Rozov, who jumped from Cho Oyu in 2016.

Baumgartner was also a helicopter pilot and was part of the Red Bull’s aerial acrobatics team.

“Since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to jump from a plane,” Baumgartner told Red Bull in an interview after becoming a licensed helicopter pilot.

“For Red Bull Stratos, we had a very long list of ‘what would happen if’, in other words, eventualities that could happen and how we would deal with them in an emergency. The list remained increasingly long. I was only afraid of things that were not on the list. The things we had not thought,” said Red Bull, and added: “Until today, aborted the missions if the conditions were not correct.”

While Baumgartner’s acrobatics inspired millions, it was known that their political opinions caused controversy. In social networks, he made fun of climatic activists and others who sought to limit the effects of climate change and expressed their opposition to LGBTQ rights, according to the News news agency. Once the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, also suggested, should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for its anti -immigrant policies.

• Italy
• Austria