Chicken-Fried News: Invisible suspect
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There’s a big difference between falling for Oklahoma and falling on Oklahoma.

Don’t believe us?

Ask Makenzie Wethington, a Joshua, Texas, woman who, in 2014, planned on living out her daredevil dream of skydiving in the Sooner State.

Instead, she was lucky to leave Oklahoma with her life after her parachute malfunctioned and she fell a jaw-dropping 3,500 feet to the ground.

To put the fall into perspective, imagine jumping off the equivalent of about four Devon Energy Center towers. Wethington suffered liver and kidney injuries; bleeding in her brain; and a broken pelvis, lumbar spine, shoulder blade and several ribs. Ouch!

In a lawsuit that was settled in mid-April, Wethington was awarded $760,000 in damages, according to a DallasNews.com story.

The lawsuit was against Pegasus Air Sports Center in Chickasha, which has since closed. The former owner now lives in the United Kingdom.

Wethington probably hoped that it would be a day she would never forget.

And it was.

“This crash and all of the injuries and my ongoing recovery will forever affect the rest of my life,” she said in an official court filing.

Wethington was a minor at the time of the crash.

She chose to jump in Oklahoma because the minimum state skydiving age at the time was 16.

The U.S. Parachuting Association has since raised it to 18.

Remind us to double-, triple- and quadruple-check our ’chutes, should the Chicken-Fried News staff ever start checking off our bucket list items.

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