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| Australia skydiving: Three dead after 'mid-air collision' | Australia skydiving: Three dead after 'mid-air collision' |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Three skydivers have died in Queensland after they apparently collided mid-air, say Australian authorities. | |
| Paramedics and police were called to Mission Beach, a popular skydiving spot about 140km (87 miles) south of Cairns. | |
| Two men in their 30s, and a woman in her 50s, were found dead at the scene, said Queensland police in a statement. | Two men in their 30s, and a woman in her 50s, were found dead at the scene, said Queensland police in a statement. |
| Police said initial investigations found one person may have had collided with tandem skydivers, and their parachutes failed to deploy correctly. | |
| The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported one local resident as saying that the three people fell on the lawn of a property about 1.5km north of the usual landing site. | |
| An unnamed eyewitness told The Cairns Post that he saw one of the skydivers falling. "You could see one chute was tangled and it wasn't opening." | |
| "I was just watching him in free fall until he went behind the trees, and that was the last I saw," he said. | |
| "It wasn't good to watch. I had my heart in my mouth." | |
| The area's local mayor John Kremastos told the ABC that the incident was "horrible news", saying: "Three people in one accident is very, very sad." | |
| Skydiving is a popular tourist activity in the area, with many of the backpackers who travel the Queensland coast stopping by Mission Beach. |