Wow:
Two members of the Golden Knights parachute team were tangled together, plummeting to Earth at 65 mph with little chance of survival.
One of them, Sgt. David Echeverry, was being strangled by a parachute cord. He knew that he and his teammate, Staff Sgt. Christopher Clark, couldn’t survive if they remained entwined. So in his last moments of consciousness, he pulled his release cord, hoping to give his partner a chance.
His last thoughts, he said, were of his wife, Rachel, and his two children – 3-year-old Jacob and 16-month-old Elijah.
A few seconds later, when Echeverry thought he should have been dead, he came to – and found himself dangling from Clark, who held onto Echeverry’s lines with all of his strength.
“I realized I was still alive and I was hanging from Chris,” Echeverry said Tuesday, months after both soldiers risked their lives during a daring mid-air rescue.
“I had him and I wasn’t letting go,” recalled Clark, who collapsed with exhaustion after the two landed.
Today, both Golden Knights were honored by the Army for risking their own lives while saving each other.
That’s like something out of a movie, but it happened.
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