Florida kite surfer, 61, dies after winds fling him into a house
Fred Salter was ‘one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and I’m just in shock right now’ says a friend
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Your support makes all the difference.A 61-year-old Florida kite surfer has died after winds slammed him into a house.
Fred Salter, a seasoned kite surfer, went to the beach on Wednesday morning in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Reports said that he hadn’t even gone into the water when winds picked him up to 400ft in the air and flung him into the second storey of a house on the 2600 block of North Atlantic Boulevard.
“He was windsurfing on the beach, and the wind picked up and threw him against the building, and he went down,” a witness said in a 911 call. “He’s unconscious on the floor. He’s bleeding.”
His orange kite was seen covered over the second floor.
Mr Salter initially survived the accident and was taken to a nearby hospital at 10am. But he died from injuries three hours later.
"He loved what he did, and [he was] one of the nicest people I've ever met, and I'm just in shock right now," his friend Heather Hentges told WSVN, adding:"I can't believe it. I'm just so sad for him."
Kite surfers wear a body harness that attaches to a parachute. But if conditions go awry, there’s a safety release system for them to detach themselves from the equipment.
Stephen Gollan, chief of the Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue team, said Mr Salter had a harness on when they found him.
Other kite surfers weren’t sure why Mr Salter didn’t release the kite or use the safety release system, the Sun Sentinel reported.
Strong winds and a thunderstorm rolled into the area around the time Mr Salter went to the beach. Broward county issued a weather advisory right before the accident.
“When our units arrived, we had very strong gusts in the area,” Mr Gollan told the New York Daily News. “We had a storm come through just prior to the 911 call, so went from relatively calm conditions to extremely dangerous conditions in a short period of time.”
Mr Salter was a father, grandfather and cancer survivor.
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