Sixteen-year-old Makenzie Wethington from north Texas is being treated in intensive care in an Oklahoma hospital after falling 3,500 feet after a skydive jump went wrong, NBC News reported.
She is currently being treated for a broken vertebrae in her back, a broken pelvis and has bleeding in her brain, lungs and liver, NBC reported.
Makenzie and her father Joe travelled to Pegasus Air Sports Center in Oklahoma on Saturday to fulfill his daughters wish of going sky diving, but after Makenzie jumped from the plane she began to spin and could not properly open her parachute, according to NBC.
"The whole thing that's keeping us going is because she's still alive and really she shouldn't be," Meagan Wethington, Makenzie's sister, told NBC.
"I wanted to be behind her, you know, in case something happened. But that couldn't happen because of the weight of the plane and the people, so I had to be first. She had to be last," Joe said, according to NBC.
He made his jump and landed fine, but when Makenzie jumped from the plane, he said he knew right away something was wrong, NBC reported.
"She's just now coming out of the plane, but she's flipping out of the plane," Joe said, NBC reported. "It was a horror to see, no matter who it was, but I sure didn't want it to be my little girl."
Makenzie's sister said when her sister jumped from the plane, "the plane pulled the cord for her" sending the parachute out improperly, according to NBC.
"My dad said that the guy on the ground was talking to [my sister] through the radio," Megan told NBC, adding the instructor kept telling Makenzie to "reach up" and to "pull the chute out."
The owner of Pegasus Air Sports Center allowed Makenzie to jump alone with the consent of her father even though she is only 16-years-old, NBC reported. Usually, the allowed age for a person to skydive is 18, and the first sky dive is usually with an experienced professional.
Bob Swainson of Pegasus Air Sports Center told NBC jumpers are trained to try and help themselves through difficult scenarios.
"We go through those scenarios and tell the jumper how to control, how to fix the problem. From what we can determine, she did not do that, go through that training as taught," Swainson told NBC, adding that "There was nothing wrong with the parachute."
"She probably panicked and did not follow the training. You've got to keep your head when you skydive. That's why people skydive. It is a dangerous activity. You've got to learn to keep your head even on your first jump, you have to keep your head," Swainson said, according to NBC.
Makenzie's father claims the parachute did not completely and properly open and that the instructor on the plane did not jump out to help his daughter because there was still one jumper who decided to not jump last minute, NBC reported.
"And then the guy, the instructor, flew with the plane. He never came out of the plane because of the coward that wouldn't come out ahead of her, that didn't go. I shouldn't say that, but the guy ahead of her didn't go. He had to ride the plane down with him," Joe told NBC.
After Makenzie fell to the ground, her father tried to comfort her but all she could do was scream in pain, according to NBC.
"She would scream, she would scream and arch her back, and ask me to rub her back. And she kept telling everybody to get off of her. And wasn't nobody on her. Wasn't nobody touching her. She'd scream, and then real loud, just a horrible scream," Joe told NBC.
