12 Jan 2018

Missing Wanaka skydiver named

9:56 pm on 12 January 2018

The missing Wanaka skydiver has been named by police as Tyler Nii.

Tyler Nii.

Tyler Nii Photo: Facebook / Tyler Nii

The 27-year-old Californian was holidaying alone in New Zealand when he fell into Lake Wakatipu on Wednesday during a tandem skydiving jump.

His instructor from the company NZONE was rescued from the lake 20 minutes later and sustained only minor bruises.

Mr Nii worked as a tennis coach in northern California.

Police said dive teams would arrive in Queenstown over the weekend and assess whether it would be viable to use sonar equipment to find and recover his body.

They have previously said recovering the body would be complex because the area where they fell was 250m deep.

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission is investigating.

NZONE's Australian parent company Experience Co owns Skydive Mission Beach in the far north of Queensland.

That company was involved in what is thought to be a mid-air crash in October last year where three people died.

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