First story.

Second story.

Police are investigating the death of an Hidalgo County lawyer
killed while hang gliding in Edinburg. Lemuel Lopez died along the stretch of
Constitution Street and Highway 281 Wednesday evening. Police say he was in a
hang glider being pulled by a pick-up truck.

Lemuel had been learning from Donnell Hewitt and was likely
flying a Wills Wing Falcon.

Donnell Hewett <<kfldh00>>
writes:

Lemuel Lopez was a wonderful person with an adventurous spirit who
took six hang gliding lessons from me and logged some thirty flights totaling
about ten minutes in nine months. He was progressing well with consistently good
take-offs, climb outs, straight flights, releases, and landings. He was also
progressing well in ground school and was well aware of the risks of trying to
tow on his own. Therefore, I was shocked to learn that he had built himself a
towing system and was killed while using it to tow in Edinburg (some 100 miles
away from me in Kingsville).

I have filed an accident report to USHPA and am continuing to investigate what
happened. So far I have learned that he was towing with his own unproven towing
system accompanied only by an inexperienced driver. He foot-launched
successfully and climbed to an altitude of about 100 ft on a 250 ft towline.
When the driver could no longer see the pilot in the rear view mirror, the
driver stopped and may even have backed up somewhat before getting out of the
pickup to watch the flight. The pilot apparently tried to release without
success by cutting his weak link with a pocket knife. He continued to fly
straight ahead with the towline draped over the control bar still attached to
the pickup. When the towline tightened, the glider nosed down and the pilot
crashed head first into the ground. He was killed on impact.

As stated previously, I am continuing to investigate the incident to confirm the
above report because I have had no opportunity to interview the only eye
witness, namely, the driver who obviously has been distraught over the tragedy.

There is a lot to learn from this accident (and a lot more to find
out). The only problem is that we've already learned it many times.