A Bridge Day parachutist fell to his death from the New River Gorge Bridge because his parachute opened too late or opened only part way, Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird said Sunday.

Brian Lee Schubert, 66, of Alta Loma, Calif., was only about 25 feet above the river when his parachute deployed, witnesses said.

On Sunday, several media sources reported that a “malfunctioning parachute” could have caused Schubert’s death, but Laird said those reports were not correct.

“Partial or late deployment certainly doesn’t mean the parachute malfunctioned,” he said.

Instead, Schubert might have failed to open his chute in time, Laird said.

Schubert was one of hundreds of BASE jumpers to leap from the 876-foot-tall bridge in Fayetteville during the annual Bridge Day festival.

He is the first person to die at the event since 1987 and the second since it began in 1980. The Bridge Day Commission, the group that plans Bridge Day, is scheduled to meet today at 1:30 p.m. in Fayetteville.

Schubert was a former police officer, a private investigator and an avid outdoorsman, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif.

In 1966, he and a friend were the first to parachute from El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot-tall rock cliff in Yosemite National Park, California.

The Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and the National Park Service are investigating the death, Laird said. They have obtained the parachute and plan to interview witnesses and review video from the accident.

A video on WOWKTV.com showed a man who appeared to be Schubert who walked to the edge of the bridge platform, raised both hands to his side and jumped from the bridge. In his right hand he held a small parachute called a pilot chute that, once released, is designed to pull open the larger parachute.

It takes approximately eight seconds to fall the 876 feet to the New River.

By the time his parachute began to inflate — when, according to witnesses, he was about 25 feet above the water — he could have been traveling as fast as 70 to 80 mph, said Mick Knutson, president of Blinc Magazine for BASE jumpers.

Bill Mehle of Charleston said he witnessed Schubert’s fall. Schubert appeared to do a slow flip in midair, Mehle said. His parachute did not inflate until he was very close to the water, and then it only opened partway, Mehle said.

“I saw him and said to myself, ‘Let it go, let it go.’ But obviously, he didn’t in time,” Mehle said.

Knutson said he has BASE jumped — or parachuted from fixed objects like cliffs and bridges — more than 500 times. (BASE stands for building; antenna, a term for uninhabited towers like aerial masts; span; and earth, in the sense of cliffs and other natural formations.)

In a good jump, Knutson said, he will grab the pilot chute in one hand, “punch your chest out to the horizon” and jump away from the structure.

Depending on the size of the jump, he will wait several seconds, release the pilot chute, wait for the main chute to inflate and glide to earth.

People sometimes will do flips and other acrobatics in midair, he said. Some jumpers wait until the last possible moment before throwing out their pilot chute.

“If all else fails, all a person has to do is open his hands and the pilot chute will instantly grab air,” he said.

Knutson said he would rather not speculate about the accident until a thorough investigation is complete.

“We’d like to know what happened, ourselves,” he said. “We’d like to learn from it.”

Knutson said he hopes the death does not prevent further jumps from the bridge. There is an effort to expand Bridge Day to a three-day event, and another petition seeks to open the bridge for jumps year-round.

Since 1981, there have been at least 100 BASE-jump fatalities around the world, according to the World BASE Fatality List, a Web site maintained by a BASE jumper.

But deaths are rare, considering the tens of thousands of jumps made every year, Knutson said.

“BASE jumping is the most misunderstood sport,” he said. “People think we have a death wish. I’ve never met anyone with one.”

He said he has learned a sense of confidence from the sport that has led to success in the rest of his life. He knows he can face his fears and still do what needs to be done, he said.

“When I jump,” he said, “I know that nobody in the world can help me but myself.”