Such was the joke that circulated in news stories and on television after Paul Moran, of the Las Vegas-based Flying Elvi skydiving troupe, crashed to the ground during a show at the Glacier Peaks Casino in Browning, Mont., on Sept. 29.
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But the joke turned tragic on Nov. 24 when Moran, 52, died from the injuries that he sustained in the parachuting accident, said his half-sister, Jane Blacow.
"Everybody seemed to make a big joke out of it," Blacow said from her home in Stockton, Calif. "It was just brutal."
What almost all the news stories didn't report, Blacow said, was that Moran also sustained major internal injuries, broke his heel and leg and was on a respirator since the accident.
"I don't think people realized how bad it was," she said.
Moran died at HarborView Medical Center in Seattle, where he had been taken after the accident.
The incident made its way into newspapers and on the Internet, with video of Moran's fatal accident being posted on the video-sharing Web site "YouTube."
The video shows Moran, with his parachute open, falling onto a concrete parking lot and bouncing. He was falling at an estimated 50 mph, according to news stories.
Media outlets at the time treated the story with a snicker, with lines such as "A Flying Elvi has suffered a broken pelvi," included in a report in the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune, and "There was Elvis the Pelvis. Then there was the Flying Elvis who broke his pelvis during the grand opening of Glacier Peaks Casino," in an Associated Press story posted on the Fox News Web site.
The Flying Elvi troupe in Las Vegas did not return calls for comment.
Blacow said Moran, a building contractor in Stockton, had been a Flying Elvi for about 13 years. She said he was passionate about water skiing, snowboarding, and of course, sky diving.
"I think in his own mind, he knew it (sky diving) would get the best of him. But he loved it," she said.
