JACKSONVILLE, Fla.--A man in Jacksonville was hoping to spend his Sunday in the air but he ended up in the trees instead -- 80 feet up!
It was not quite the day paragliding he'd planned.
Cellphone video showed the moments the man went airborne with his powered paraglider. In less than 30 seconds, he was trapped in the trees.
Shikhar Jhalani lives nearby: "I was kind of shocked as to why he was parasailing in this weather especially with a storm just came by and everything so I guess he just wanted to be really daring and make a scene or something."
A great job done by our crews getting a man and his equipment out of a tree at about 80 ft....no injuries reported and he walked away. #justanotherday #itswhatwedo pic.twitter.com/ppLEGLpehv
— MyJFRD (@JFRDJAX) May 6, 2019
The scene quickly became a spectacle for people who live in the area. "I would've never expect to see someone parasailing at a park especially with all these trees," Jhalani said.
Travis Akers was at the park with his two sons. "We saw him flying around which is odd because we've never seen anyone do that over here."
Not long after, emergency responders started showing up.
"And then looking around all of the sudden we see a parachute in the trees so that was definitely something you don't see every day," Akers said.
A firefighter with JFRDS special operations team used shoe spikes to climb the tree and get the man down safely.
The paraglider is doing just fine-- he wasn't even hurt. He says he just misjudged the wind and that's how he ended up in the trees.
