The 18-year-old and an experienced instructor died when something went wrong in the tandem jump in Thomaston, Georgia, on Sunday.
As their siblings and parents watched from the ground, they saw a parachute spinning and a couple of people flipping in the sky. Later they found out it was Jeanna.
“We were all anxious after she landed and talked to her and heard her story,” her father, Joey Triplicata, told CNN. “I feel like they stole that from us and now they steal the rest of their lives. It’s very painful.”
Newnan’s teen and Warner Robins’ instructor Nick Esposito, 35, died at the scene, Upson County Sheriff Dan Kilgore said in a statement provided to CNN. The sheriff’s office is investigating the accident.
“Upon exiting the aircraft, the primary parachute did not open properly and spun,” Kilgore said in the statement. The emergency parachute was deployed at a very low altitude but was never fully opened, he added.
The sheriff said Esposito was an experienced paratrooper and employee of Skydive Atlanta, based at the Thomaston-Upson County Airport, about 60 miles south of Atlanta.
Jeanna will never be able to cross the stage at her high school graduation, which was rescheduled for the end of July due to the pandemic. She will not be able to attend the University of North Georgia. She will not become an English teacher, as her father said she aspired to do.
Triplicata said it tears her heart not to see the person her oldest son would have become.
Triplicata, 43, described Jeanna as an atypical teenager. He said his daughter was “special” and that she never gave her mother and father any trouble.
“I was very family oriented and I wanted to make things right in life,” she said. “She didn’t break the rules. When we bought her first car, she didn’t want anything flashy or that would stand out.”
The teenager had just graduated from Northgate High School, where she was on the color guard team. She was the captain in her senior year and enjoyed performing alongside her brother, Giovanni, 15, who was in the band.
Jeanna was obsessed with singer and songwriter Harry Styles. She had seen one of his concerts and was scheduled to attend another one next year, which was postponed due to the coronavirus. She was wearing a Harry Styles shirt the day she skydived, her father said.
His other passions include Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” even though it was not the best thing for an “older teenager,” his father said. She was also a big fan of “Grey’s Anatomy”, always trying to get her parents to see her, which they never did.
“Right now, I can’t even imagine myself enjoying a television show,” her father said. “When we do, we will certainly see it and think about it.”
Jeanna was very close to her grandmother, Renee Sands. She would sleep at her grandmother’s house and they would see “Grey’s Anatomy” together.
Sands and Jeanna went skydiving together on Sunday. It was another adventure for both of them and something Jeanna had wanted to do for years.
This was only the second time that Jeanna had been on an airplane; The last time was when she was a baby, her father said.
“She wanted to see what things look like in the air so high,” he said. “She had never experienced that. It was a lot of first times for her and it was supposed to be a great day, and it turned out to be the worst day of our lives.”
Sands was the plane’s first tandem jumper that day. The 60-year-old woman seeks more emotions than her granddaughter and went to look for Jeanna to exchange stories of her experiences, Triplicata said.
The whole family waited for Jeanna to find out how it was. Her parents, her brother, her 9-year-old sister, Julia, and her sister’s friend waited, and it seemed to be taking too long.
Someone said he must have landed in the field near the airport, which happens sometimes, his father said. Some family members began to panic because they knew nothing.
“We got in the truck and just ran through the airfield. We had to cross the runway and we really didn’t care,” Triplicata said. “We had heard someone say they saw police lights.”
It was then that he said they knew something was going on.
At that point, his father thought, “You know, this is for sure. This doesn’t happen,” thinking it was nothing important. Maybe he hurt his ankle during landing, he thought.
When the family approached the field, a pair of sheriff’s deputies were there. “He tells us it doesn’t look good and that’s when we lost him,” said his father.
Hours had passed at this point, but when the sheriff’s deputy took all the adults to a room, Triplicata knew that his life was going to change forever.
He protected his wife, Bridgette, and said he would tell the children what happened. They had been there because of the wait, the uncertainty, and what came next.
“Usually, you try to protect your children’s things, especially the little ones from something like this,” Triplicata said. “I felt so terrible. You’re not supposed to see something like that at 9 years old.”
Jeanna and the instructor, Esposito, died after the parachute malfunctioned. Eyewitnesses saw the deployment of the main parachute, according to Skydive Atlanta.
“Our community is devastated by both our team member and the student and their respective families,” Skydive Atlanta owner Trey Holladay said in a statement. “We are all stunned and truly speechless as we are a very close family. We have spoken to family members and we are all asking for privacy as we process and cry.”
Skydive Atlanta said it is working with authorities and the FAA to investigate what happened.
The skydiving shop has hosted “tens of thousands” of jumps since it opened in 1985, according to the statement.
“We want to know what happened and I hope and pray that we eventually know what happened,” Triplicata said.
He said he expects answers while authorities investigate.
“I want this to never happen again, so I want to know what happened,” Triplicata said. “So a father, a husband, a wife, a daughter will never have to go through this again. This pain is almost excruciating.”
The only thing that has helped the family survive is the outpouring of love and support from people who loved Jeanna and even some strangers, she said.
“In the state we are in now in the world and in the country with all the division, it is wonderful to see all this love and support,” he said. “Jeanna would have loved that. She would have wanted us to be comforted and loved as much as possible.”
The Triplicata family plans to bury their daughter on Saturday after a public service in her hometown of Newnan.
“I hate that this tragedy is the reason why people will learn more about her and her life,” said her father. “The tragedy has happened and at this point, we just want Jeanna to be remembered as the person she was, who was a wonderful young woman.”
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