PLAINFIELD, Illinois — A 21-year-old man from Woodridge died on Saturday afternoon, November 14, after his paraglider came down in a farm field in Plainfield, in Chicago's southwestern suburbs, following what police described as an apparent in-flight emergency. The Kendall County Coroner's Office pronounced him dead at the scene and later identified him as Giovanni Lopez of Woodridge.

Source: ABC7 Chicago

Plainfield police said officers were called just before 3 p.m. — one report put the time at 2:57 p.m. — to the area of 127th Street and Ridge Road, after reports that a paraglider had gone down in the field there. Lopez was the pilot and the only person aboard the paraglider. No one on the ground was reported injured.

People who were nearby tried to help Lopez before help arrived, police said, and Oswego paramedics then took over life-saving efforts at the scene. Those efforts were not successful, and coroner's deputies who reached the field pronounced him dead there.

Identification and the autopsy

The coroner's office said it was notified of a possible fatality at about 3:40 p.m. on Saturday, roughly 40 minutes after the first call to police, and sent investigators to the field. After Lopez was pronounced dead, the office confirmed his identity as a 21-year-old resident of Woodridge, a village in DuPage and Will counties about 15 miles northeast of the crash site. As of Sunday, November 15, officials had not released a cause or manner of death; both are pending the results of a forensic autopsy, which is the standard process the coroner's office uses to establish how a death occurred.

Source: Kendall County Coroner's Office via CrashDaily

The investigation

Plainfield police detectives, working alongside the Kendall County Coroner's Office, are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the crash. Police described the event as an apparent in-flight emergency but have not said what kind of emergency it was, what type of wing Lopez was flying, how much experience he had, or whether weather played any part; none of those details had been released as of Sunday. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Detective Sergeant Ron Mikos of the Plainfield Police Department at 815-267-7237.

Source: Plainfield Police Department via The Chicago Focal

Paragliding over the Plainfield fringe

Paragliding is a form of unpowered flight in which the pilot sits in a harness suspended beneath a fabric wing and stays aloft on rising air currents and wind. Emergencies in the air can develop quickly and leave a pilot with limited options for a safe landing. The field near 127th Street and Ridge Road sits on Plainfield's rural fringe: the village spans Will and Kendall counties at the edge of the Chicago region's suburban sprawl, where subdivisions give way to open farmland — the kind of open ground that draws recreational flyers, and where reaching a downed pilot can take responders extra minutes.

For Woodridge and Plainfield, the loss is of a young man at the start of his adult life, killed during a Saturday-afternoon recreational flight a short drive from home. Police have not announced any memorial or family statement, and Awaaz Punjab is not publishing photographs of the scene out of respect for the family.

What happens next

The coroner's office is expected to release Lopez's cause and manner of death once the forensic autopsy is complete. Plainfield police say their investigation into what happened in the air is continuing; no timeline for its findings has been announced. This report will be updated if officials release the autopsy findings or new details about the flight.