

Frederick Morello, Ormond Beach, Florida man identified as lone skydiver who crashed into Titusville, Florida yard over the weekend in ‘hard landing,’ crash- with parachute appearing to have been opened very late.
A skydiver who was killed over the weekend following a ‘hard landing’ in the front yard of a Titusville, Florida home has been identified as a 69 year old avid skydiver.
Frederick C. Morello, 69, a lawyer from Ormond Beach, was involved in a ‘solo parachuting incident’ on Saturday, Oct. 7, according to Titusville Police Department.
Police officers and the fire department responded to the home when Morello was found wearing ‘parachute attire and gear’ and lying in the lawn, according to the release. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
What went wrong?
Morello, who graduated from Georgetown Law School and worked as an employment lawyer based in Daytona Beach, was an experienced skydiver who posted pictures of himself leaping out of planes on his website.
In a section entitled ‘Fred’s Passion,’ the attorney alluded to his thrill-seeking nature.
‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,’ reads a quote on the page, followed by dozens of images of himself skydiving.
A neighbor shared surveillance footage that captured the moments before Morello’s death in the reflection of a vehicle’s back window, WKMG reported.
The video, showed a skydiver descending at a fast speed with a parachute before the hard landing.
James Sconiers, who lives at the home, told FOX 35 he saw the incident unfold.
‘He hit the ground. Bounced off the driveway into their grass. Almost like a basketball that’s just how hard he hit the ground like someone bounced him up. It’s hard,’ Sconiers said.
Adding, ‘I was asking the person that was laying on the ground, ‘Hey man can you hear me, can you hear me?’ But he did not answer.’
‘Look at the video and look at what happened. Why did he fall so hard if all the safety mechanism in place? Something tells me there’s a problem there.’
Local resident Nicole Lacount said when she heard the fire truck and police sirens she stepped out of her aunt’s house to see the scene. Lacount, who works in the medical field, says the scene was the ‘worst’ thing she’s seen.
Did victim skydive with local Skydive center?
The Titusville Fire Department stated the home was adjacent to Arthur Dunn Airpark, home of Skydive Space Center, a popular skydiving company known for its dives over shuttle launch pads, the main assembly building and the shuttle landing runway of the Kennedy Space Center, according to its website.
The outlet declined to comment on whether the skydiver came from their company. But the attorney appears to have skydived with them from the same departure point in the past.
Pictures on Morello’s website show him engaged in his hobby in several different locations — including Austin and Ukraine.
Police did not release if Morello was diving with the company or what led to the sky-diver’s hard landing.
The crash site is just miles from where two skydivers hit the ground after an apparent parachute malfunction in 2020. The two skydivers were left in critical condition.
Titusville is about 40 miles east of Orlando.