Friend identifies second BASE jumper presumed dead near Bixby Bridge

A friend and fellow BASE jumper is confirming the name of the second BASE jumper presumed dead near Bixby Bridge.

BASE jumper Tom Aiello confirmed the name Rami Kajala. Aiello, who works at Snake River BASE Academy in Idaho, described Rami as a very good BASE jumper with a kind heart.

“He was a great guy. Rami was a longtime BASE jumper, and everybody knew him,” Aiello told KION. “But more so, he was a really good person. He was one of those people who was very low-key, very humble, didn’t spend a lot time talking about himself.”

Rami Kajala of Finland, had been base jumping for 12 years with at least 2,300 jumps under his belt. Friends said he’d always look for the next best jump and that’s what brought him to Bixby Bridge. Kajala jumped down to try and rescue Katie Connell from a large set of waves.

“Rami died because he was trying to save somebody else, and that wasn’t really a base jumping incident he was trying to save somebody else from drowning,” said fellow base instructor, Tom Aiello.

While it’s not clear exactly what Kajala was wearing the day he jumped, the average BASE jumper wears about 20 pounds of equipment. The risk jumpers take for the thrill, are great.

“High surf advisories, they weren’t from here or not local to the area,” said Jackie Foust of Skydive Monterey Bay. Foust said those are important factors to be aware of before a jump and her company works hard to prevent accidents, with 100 percent safe landings so far.

“The ground and making sure that the winds, and we are honestly not motorized and we can’t go back up and retry this. We’re coming down and we have to use wind drift to navigate us,” said Foust.

Foust said in most cases BASE jumpers don’t have as much reaction time as skydivers would if something went wrong because they jump a lot closer to the ground and that’s why they only jump with one parachute.

“You have to understand that BASE jumping instruction has no formal regulation between anyone who teaches, somebody else could be an instructor. In that sense, Rami was a lot more than an average base instructor,” said Aiello.

Both jumpers are still missing and for now Monterey County Sheriffs said they are suspending the search.