Shawn Kinmartin had been a pilot for a skydiving company for four years but had never jumped from an airplane.

Until Saturday, when a skydiver damaged Kinmartin's Cessna on the way out and the 21-year-old had no choice but to bail.


It was his fourth run of the day, flying at 11,500 feet about 25 miles south of St. Louis. "Two skydivers jumped out. They were the last two I had on my airplane," Kinmartin said. "And the last skydiver on his way out actually struck the elevator of the aircraft."

The elevator is the movable flap on a plane's tail wing that controls climb and descent. "I was having trouble maintaining altitude and the plane's speed had dropped to 80 mph," Kinmartin told the Monroe County Independent.

Kinmartin said he headed back to the airport in Festus, Mo., but an emergency landing was ruled out and Kinmartin was directed east over the Mississippi while another plane scouted for the best place to ditch. Company policy requires all pilots to wear a parachute.

Kinmartin said he struggled to get the plane up to 2,000 feet, the minimum for jumping. Finally, near the small town of Valmeyer, Kinmartin said he locked the controls for a hard turn, opened the door and leapt out of the circling plane.

"I jumped out at 2,000 feet," he recalled, holding a water bottle as he stood by the side of a gravel road near where he landed. "So I only had 1,500 feet left to the ground. When I jumped out, the plane spiraled and crashed in the field over there. The wind carried me and I landed in this soybean field over here.

"When I knew it landed in a field and did not actually hit a building or hurt anyone else and my chute did deploy, at that point I finally had the rush of skydiving," he said.

Kinmartin was checked by paramedics and did not require treatment. He made a call to his company, Fly Free Skydiving, to say he was all right but the plane was not.