Joseph "Jose" Connelly

BOWLING GREEN, Mo. — A man from Ballwin who died while sky-diving Saturday apparently hit his head on part of the plane after jumping and never activated his parachute, an official with the sky diving service says.

Joseph "Jose" Connelly, 37, was one of 12 people on board the plane after 6 p.m. Saturday when he plummeted to his death in farm fields near the Bowling Green airport. The group had gone up with the St. Louis Skydiving Center.

An autopsy Monday revealed that Connelly died of multiple blunt force trauma, said Pike County Coroner Jim Turner. Turner said Connelly apparently fell 5,000 to 6,000 feet to his death. According to the pilot's statement, Turner said, the plane was still in its ascent trying to get high enough for clearance for jumping. "He went early," Turner said.

Investigators are still trying to determine what went wrong. But Paul Eriksmoen, director of operations for the St. Louis Skydiving Center in Bowling Green, said Connelly jumped from the plane before the pilot had given him the "green light" and struck his head on the plane's horizontal stabilizer about eight feet from the fuselage.

"A witness in the airplane saw the jumper grab his face after the impact and then continue to tumble until losing sight of him," according to Eriksmoen's written account of the incident. Connelly's body was found about 90 minutes later "with nothing deployed," he added.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Eriksmoen said a Federal Aviation Administration investigator examined the parachute and determined it was in good working order and had not been activated. Eriksmoen said that leads him to believe that Connelly was knocked unconscious when his head hit the horizontal stabilizer.

The FAA had no findings to release Tuesday. "It's too early for us," said FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. "Our investigation is still open. We'll be looking at the packing of the chute and the rules of flight for the aircraft — was it flying safely."

Sky diving is a self-regulated sport, and the nonprofit U.S. Parachute Association based in Virginia is investigating the accident from a different perspective. The group will be checking to see that the company followed safety rules and that Connelly was qualified for the kind of jump he was trying to make. The sky diving group that took Connelly up is affiliated with the association, said Ed Scott, the group's executive director.

Connelly was in sales with a security system installment company. He had five sisters and four brothers. He attended Parkway South High School. He had been sky-diving several years and had 175 jumps, said Patrick Cummings, Connellly's stepfather.

A memorial service for Connelly will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at St. Mark Presbyterian Church, 601 Claymont Drive in Ballwin.

kbell@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8115