Parachutist hurt in jump from bridge

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – A 29-year-old Canadian man whose parachute didn’t open correctly after he leaped from a popular sport-jumping bridge in this south-central Idaho city remained in the intensive-care unit of a Boise hospital Sunday afternoon.

Jason Cooper was airlifted Friday evening to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise after he had spiraled 486 feet into a shallow stretch of the Snake River beneath the Perrine Bridge.

The bridge is the only one in America where BASE jumpers – short for building, antennae, span and earth, the objects off which people in this sport jump – can spring from 365 days a year without a special permit.

According to the University of Calgary Web site, where Cooper has been a student, he was a skydiving instructor.