Grammy-winning producer and prominent Stockton resident Douglas Spotted Eagle was critically injured Monday afternoon after a botched skydiving landing at the Tooele Valley Airport.

Spotted Eagle, 46, had been practicing with five or six other divers from Skydive Utah when he failed to pull out of a turn soon enough and slammed into the ground going 15 to 20 mph, according to Deputy Keith Borders of the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office.

“When they come down they spin and then they do a flare to bring the parachute level with the ground,” Borders said. “He didn’t come in too smooth and came right into the ground.”

Spotted Eagle suffered pelvic and back injuries, and was air-lifted to Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

“This was entirely pilot [skydiver] error,” Spotted Eagle said while awaiting surgery, adding that the jump was made from 13,500 feet. “The parachute deployed perfectly fine. It was a normal dive until the last two or three seconds. I lost grip on my toggle.”

Aside from his successes in the music world, Spotted Eagle is an expert in the field of video production, a subject he has written on extensively.

Skydive Utah owner Jack Guthrie said Spotted Eagle was a very experienced skydiver.

“He had 1,400 jumps under his belt,” Guthrie said, adding that such accidents are rare. “When a diver is getting ready to land, they make a turn. In that turn, we lose altitude, and in this case he just turned too close to the ground. It’s been two years since we’ve had an ambulance out here for anything other than precaution. This is very rare.”

Jamie Belnap: jamieb@tooeletranscript.com