The 27-year-old Vitantonio Capotorto recorded a video telling his 25-year-old wife, Costansa Litellini, that he was "not going to pull the cord and that he was going somewhere wonderful" before he leaped off from a height as high as 13,500ft, The Independent reported.
Upon viewing the video his wife had rushed to the skydiving centre in DeLand, Florida and had begged the staff to stop her husband from skydiving. However, the plane's pilot said Vitantonio had already jumped when an employee radioed him.
Police searched for the man on ground as well as from the sky before they found his body in an open field near the DeLand Municipal airport, where the diving centre is based.
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The manager of Skydive DeLand manager Mike Johnton told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that Vitantonio's wife had arrived "moments too late" and couldn't stop the jump.
Vitantonio was an Italian national and was known to be an avid-diver and had skydived over 600 times. His social media account is filled with photographs of him in the air. Both him and his wife worked at a company which makes parachute containers called the United Parachute Technologies.
According to the police, Tara Richard, an employee from the skydiving centre said that Vitantonio "had seemed normal" when she saw him before take-off.
The diving centre also reported that Vitantonio was a licensed sky-drive who had appropriate training to jump alone and had also paid for the flight.
This article originally appeared on The Independent.
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