Lenami Godinez-Avila had just started a tandem hang-gliding flight with an instructor – a gift from her boyfriend – when she fell from the glider, plunging hundreds of feet to her death Saturday in a heavily wooded part of western Canada, authorities say.
Investigators trying to determine why she fell are accusing the instructor of trying to hide what might be a key piece of evidence – a possible onboard video recording of the flight – in his digestive tract.
William Jonathan Orders, 50, was arrested Saturday and charged this week with obstructing justice, accused of swallowing a memory card from a video camera that accompanied the pair on the flight near Agassiz, British Columbia, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Orders is scheduled to appear Friday afternoon in provincial court in Chilliwack for a hearing to determine whether he can be released on bail. But it’s unclear if it will be postponed – as it was Wednesday – if authorities haven’t retrieved the memory card, said Neil MacKenzie, communications counsel with the province’s criminal justice branch.
X-rays confirmed the card was in Orders’ body, and authorities as of Thursday morning still were waiting for the object to pass, RCMP Constable Tracy Wolbeck said. Investigators hope to recover the object.
“It’s difficult to speculate” whether the card will have retrievable video, Wolbeck said. “We’re just going to have to wait and see.”
The fall happened near Mount Woodside, from which Orders and the 27-year-old Godinez-Avila took off, more than 50 miles east of Vancouver.
A witness, Nicole McLearn, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that when the glider was in the air, Godinez-Avila appeared to be wearing her harness, but it wasn’t attached to the glider. The passenger clung to Orders before she fell, McLearn said.
"He was horizontal but she was now hanging vertically, and it looked like in essence she had him in a bear hug around the chest area," McLearn told the CBC.
"I could see her starting to slip down his body ... past the waist, down the legs. Finally she got to the feet and tried to hang on and obviously couldn't hang on for that much longer and let go, tearing off the tandem pilot's shoes in the process," McLearn said.
Jason Warner, safety director for the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada, told the CBC on Sunday that he talked to Orders shortly after the incident on Saturday afternoon.
"He tried to grab her – he tried to grab her harness, everything he could, wrapped his legs around her – and she slipped down his legs and then fell," Warner told the CBC.
Godinez-Avila’s boyfriend was videotaping the flight from the ground, the RCMP’s Wolbeck said. She said she couldn’t say how much of the flight was on the boyfriend’s camera, but the RCMP has the footage.
Godinez-Avila’s body was found Saturday after an extensive search of the wooded area, the RCMP said.
Orders told police he had swallowed the memory card of the onboard camera, Wolbeck said. When asked whether Orders explained why he had done so, Wolbeck said she couldn’t comment further on conversations he’d had with investigators.
The RCMP said it and the Coroners Service of British Columbia are investigating the incident.
“She became detached from the hang glider and fell, but how she came to be detached is what we’re still working on,” Barb McLintock, coroner with the Coroners Service of British Columbia, said Thursday.
A call on Thursday seeking comment from Orders’ attorney, Laird Cruickshank, was not immediately returned.
Orders is the owner and operator of Vancouver Hang Gliding. The business’ website said it charges $210 plus tax for an introductory tandem flight on weekends, and $190 plus tax on weekdays.
For $30 extra, the website says, customers can get “video footage of your flight in memory card.”
Godinez-Avila lived in Canada for nine years, having come to the country with her parents from Mexico, Wolbeck said.
Pat Denevan, longtime hang-gliding instructor and the owner of San Francisco Hang Gliding Center and the Mission Soaring Center in California, said people who go hang gliding wear a harness. A strap from the harness is then clipped into a main “hang loop” on the glider’s frame, using a mountaineering carabiner, he said.
A strap also is clipped to a backup loop, Denevan said. The straps are able to take thousands of pounds of force, and gliders are “good for six times the force of gravity,” he said.
“It’s up to the instructor to check that he’s hooked in and that his passenger is hooked in before he takes off,” Denevan said of the typical tandem hang-gliding flight. “This is standard procedure.”
McLintock said that if investigators determine Godinez-Avila’s death was an accident, the coroner’s service would take the lead in the investigation. Investigators are looking into whether pilot error or equipment failure were factors, and experts in the hang-gliding field probably will examine the equipment, she said.
After investigators determine what happened, the coroner’s service hopes to make “recommendations both reasonable and practical to prevent future deaths in similar circumstances,” she said.
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My prayers are with her family and her boyfriend. How can anyone say anything else?
Easily.... I guess the boyfrined wanted to end the relationship and didnt know how, so he asked the instructor to "dump" her for him. Did he really think swallowing an SD card would ruin it? Silly Canadians!!
thank goodness your prayers are going to be with them. That's unbelievably helpful! I'll send mine to them too!
Tell me what happened.
Condolences are enough.
Praying to a supernatural being statistically will do nothing. (except perhaps relieve stress, like meditation).
@kingkong Yes, life holds bad and good, and I'm glad I still have my feelings intact. Too many people have become hardened these days. And no, I won't be staying away from my T.V.
I recommend they give the flight instructor a MRI with some extra-strong magnets, just to make sure the memory device is in there. When the MRI machine painfully rips the magnet out of his body, perhaps he'll regret swallowing it.
MRI machines don't really work that way. At best, it would burn him internally while completely destroying the contents of the card.
The magnets will destroy the evidence that's considering the x-rays haven't destroyed the data card.
MRI might also erase card or corrupt data on it.
and also erase the evidence
this too shall pass
And just when you think you've heard about all things , that nothing new is left . . .
Condolences to her family . . .
Hang gliding, scuba diving, etc. Lots of opportunities for things to go "wrong" if you get what I mean. Often "loved ones" are involved. Just sayin.
Considering it cost extra to have the video footage taken, and the boyfriend was also shooting video from the ground, I doubt he was trying to get rid of her. If that was the case he would not have spent the extra $30 to have video evidence of his crime.
What a moron! The article says Orders told police he had swallowed the memory card of the onboard camera! Why'd he do that after deciding to swallow it? I mean he'd already decided to try to cover up his negligence, why narc on himself after the fact? Would police have x-rayed him or even thought to x-ray him as a matter of normal procedure? Probably not. I guess guilt got the best of him, as well it should have, but really, what a moron! Now just a horrific accident with negligence is looking much, much worse for him.
Boyfriend paid the hang glider operator to drop her...?
I'd hate to be the person required to retrieve the evidence......
It will all come out in the end..
1000 feet drop.
Is that typical for hang-gliders? That seems awfully high for some reason.
Yes usually at least 1000 feet. Then they search for rising warm air and try to climb. In some places they can get up to 10,000 feet and higher!
Actually 1000ft is not awfully high as many fly upwards of 10,000
How awful. The boyfriend who saw it all happen, and the woman who had a little bit of time to know what was going to happen when she slipped...I'm sure the instructor will have nightmares about this for years to come about her desperately holding on and probably screaming and begging him to do something....
Typical – trying to avoid liability for stupidity or negligence
$50 says she was preggers and the boyfriend paid to the instructor to fabricate an accident.
Not that I want to say anything to in any way defend the guy because I think it was his negligence that caused the girl's death, but the article says that he told police that he had swallowed the card. I doubt that the police would have x-rayed him to look for the memory card had he not told them that. It sounds like he panicked after she fell and therefore chose to try to hide evidence, but with more thought decided to own up to things. Still, a young girl died because he failed to hook her in properly. So sad.