Skydiver recovering after falling onto home

OCEANSIDE, Calif. (KSWB) — A skydiver is recovering after falling from the sky and hitting a home in California.

“It felt like forever, just looking at him … We stood there in, like, shock just going, ‘He has to be dead,'” said Amber Sweet-Smith, who saw the injured skydiver in her yard in Oceanside moments after he fell last week.

The skydiver was on a jump with GoJump Oceanside from the nearby airport. He plummeted to the ground after his parachute failed to completely open.

Sweet-Smith said her husband was outside at the time.

“We usually hear the screaming or, you know, people laughing — just in the air, and he heard like an unusual scream, looked up, saw the guy and went, probably in his head, ‘Oh ****, he’s going to hit our house,'” she said.

Sweet-Smith said the skydiver first hit her neighbor’s roof, then fell into their yard.

“It felt like the whole wall shook. … It was scary,” she said.

As she and her husband went to help the skydiver, she said, a GoJump instructor promptly landed in the street.

“One of the other parachuter guys said he saw him and knew he was in trouble and landed in the street,” Sweet-Smith said. “So he was pretty helpful back there, too.”

First responders arrived in minutes and got the man to a hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries.

“We’re just grateful that he’s fine, you know, a few broken bones. I mean, looking at him when he moaned, did the first moan and everything, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a miracle,'” said Sweet-Smith.

She told KSWB that she was notified that the skydiver was released Monday from the hospital.