Page 4 - Greg Stapleton News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Was katie. and relief in her voice, i could hear it in her voice, oh, my gosh, you are still alive. >> stapleton is rushed to the hospital. and, defying all odds, he is released that night with no broken bones and only minor bruises. >> at 7:00 p.m. that night, i walked out of that emergency room. >> in the hospital parking lot, friends are waiting to celebrate. >> it was probably the best sunset i've ever seen. >> it turns out stapleton may owe his life to the one row of freshly plowed dirt that helped to soften his 8,000-foot fall. >> so i landed right about here in front of one of these pla...

Is so tangled, it can't help the primary chute slow down his fall. >> i'm at 1200 feet and got a few seconds to think about what's important and say good-bye. >> about to land in a vineyard where metal stakes can be lethal, a fellow sky driver's cell phone records stapleton as he plummets to earth. hanson races to her friend. >> don't move, craig. don't move. >> i was 100% sure that he was dead. >> hanson drops her helmet cam to the ground. >> what is your name? >> craig stapleton. >> where are you? >> the drop zone in the [ bleep ] wine field. >> amazing, stapleton is breathing and conscious....

>> i released my end of the flag so the problem became just craig's, and then i started just following him down. >> stapleton manages to free his arms and release the flag. but he's losing all altitude, and hope, fast. >> now i'm down to one problem. i have a malfunctioned parachute. sky divers are trained from jump one how to deal with a malfunctioned parachute. you reach down and pull the handle and release the parachute. >> the handle is jammed, so the only way to release the chute is to cut it free. but he is spinning so violently he can't get to the knife in his leg pocket. >> i put part ...

That my feet are actually on her shoulders. i'm already down above her. >> he lowered down the tether. all i had to do was clip it in. >> then, in the most delicate part of the maneuver, they separate, and start to unfurl a huge american flag, which isn't seen yet on camera. >> it's like flying in a hurricane. it's 80 miles an hour straight at the ground. >> but something goes terribly wrong. stapleton gets his foot tangled in his lines, partially collapsing his parachute. >> at first i'm thinking, oh, man, i'm such an idiot. he can't believe i let this happen. my parachute started spinning, a...

>> then, in the most delicate part of the maneuver, they separate, and start to unfurl a huge american flag, which isn't seen yet on camera. >> it's like flying in a hurricane. it's 80 miles an hour straight at the ground. >> but something goes terribly wrong. stapleton gets his foot tangled in his lines, partially collapsing his parachute. >> at first i'm thinking, oh, man, i'm such an idiot. he can't believe i let this happen. my parachute started spinning, and my arms actually got trapped in the lines of parachute, and i knew i was dead right then. we were probably doing 60 to 70 miles an h...