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Reno cop accused in illegal parachute jump to fight charges
Martha Bellisle
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
6/2/2004 10:05 pm
A Reno police officer accused of making an illegal parachute jump off a popular rock formation in Yosemite National Park plans to fight the federal misdemeanor charges, his lawyer said this week.
Allan D. Fox, 44, allegedly made a BASE jump off the 8,842-foot Half Dome to the valley floor at about 4,000 feet with two friends from California last summer, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
Three people were spotted jumping with parachutes by park visitors about 9 p.m. July 15, Gediman said.
A park ranger caught up with Fox, Kirby Wayne Hughes, 33, and Brian Cork, 22, at the base of Half Dome near Mirror Lake and arrested them, he said. Hughes is from the Sacramento area and Cork is from Pleasant Hill, Calif., Gediman said.
The three were charged with one count of illegal air delivery and one count of conspiracy to commit an illegal air delivery, Gediman said. Both charges carry a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine and/or six months in jail, Gediman said.
Fox’s lawyer, Scott Freeman, said the officer has pleaded innocent.
“He’s going to fight the charges at this point,” Freeman said.
Fox, a Reno patrol officer, declined to comment on the case while it is pending. A hearing at the U.S. Magistrate’s Court in Yosemite is scheduled Aug. 11, Freeman said.
“There’s a significant issue related to arrest,” Freeman added. “Mr. Fox made no statements. He wasn’t carrying anything. One of them had a pack with a helmet showing and one had a backpack with something that looked like a parachute, but Mr. Fox had no identifiable items on him.
“He was simply arrested because the others were.”
Reno Assistant Chief Jim Weston said Fox faces no sanctions for the arrest.
“When that happened we did a review,” Weston said. “Since he didn’t identify himself as police officer we didn’t take any jurisdiction on that case. There has been no personnel action taken against him.”
BASE jumping, which stands for Building, Antenna, Span (bridge) and Earth (cliff), involves jumping with a parachute off a fixed object, as opposed to stepping out of an airplane.
It’s illegal in national parks, Gediman said.
“The National Park Service feels that BASE jumping is an inappropriate activity here,” he said. “There are frequent injuries, resource damage, spectator management problems and other impacts.
“We aren’t against BASE jumping — we are not here to judge, but to measure the impacts of certain activities and manage them,” he added.
In the past 20 years, six people have died and several people have been injured while jumping from rock formations in Yosemite, he said.
One high-profile fatality occurred in 1999 when a group of BASE jumpers stepped off the 7,569-foot El Capitan during an act of civil disobedience, protesting that BASE jumping is illegal.
About 150 spectators watched as one of four jumpers, Jan Davis, 60, of Santa Barbara, Calif., died when her parachute did not open, Gediman said.
