Teen celebrating birthday dies in freak skydiving accident

A 17-year-old died in a freak skydiving accident in Colorado — just one day before his birthday, sheriff’s officials and relatives said.

Dayton Bryant, of Azle, Texas, died Sunday — just shy of his 18th birthday — while skydiving at High Sky Adventures in Colorado, where he was pronounced dead after an apparent parachute failure during his first skydiving attempt, which was a solo jump, sheriff’s officials said.

Bryant, whose death was being treated as an accident, was pronounced dead at the scene by the Fremont County coroner. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday, sheriff’s officials said.

The coroner’s chief deputy told KDFW that the teen’s parachute went into a spiral shortly after his jump, but said no defects were found in his equipment. His mother, Sunja Stevens, told the station that her son sent her one last photo before the fatal plunge.

“He asked me if I knew what kind of skydiving he would be doing,” Stevens said. “I assumed tandem. That’s when he told me about this type of skydiving called static line. I was trying to be supportive of his celebration and what he wanted to do.”

The website of the skydiving facility advertises a first-jump course starting at $99 that begins with four to five hours of training before jumping with a static line, which “automatically opens your parachute as you exit the aircraft at 3,500 feet above the ground,” according to the website.

“As you progress, you make short freefall jumps without the static line and progress to longer freefalls,” the website boasts.

Staffers at High Sky Adventures did not return a message seeking comment Thursday morning.

Stevens, meanwhile, said Bryant had the choice to celebrate his birthday with a trip to the beach or the mountains.

“Of course, he chose mountains,” Stevens told KDFW.

Stevens said her husband, who wanted the trip to be a memory of a lifetime, is now “blaming himself” for their son’s demise. It was not clear if he took the trip with the teen before the accident.

“It’s totally unwarranted, of course,” Stevens said. “He just refuses to leave Colorado without his son.”

Stevens now wants a requirement that all first-time skydivers take tandem dives as their first jumps.

“I do feel if he hadn’t jumped alone, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you,” she told the station.

The teen was set to graduate in May from Azle High School, where he played tuba in the marching band.

“Dayton was an incredible young man who inspired many of our former and current members and showed them what it meant to be in a drum corps,” the Guardians Drum & Bugle Corps wrote on Facebook. “We cheered him on as he accomplished so much this past year, and were excited to see him live his life to the fullest … Rest in peace, our friend. We miss you. Happy birthday.”

An online fundraiser set up to offset funeral costs for the teen’s family had raised more than $4,500 as of Thursday.