Skip navigation
Advertisement

The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne IN

Mostly Cloudy

66°

Local weather

Friends filmed fatal quarry jump

65-foot leap made famous in cycling movie “Breaking Away”

BLOOMINGTON – A young man who drowned in a southern Indiana quarry died after making a 65-foot leap from an imposing ledge made famous in the movie “Breaking Away,” police said.

Walter Ayala of Washington jumped Saturday into Sanders Quarry from “Rooftop” ledge, an imposing ledge from which actors in the 1979 film jumped into the quarry in Bloomington.

Friends of the 18-year-old filmed his jump and continued shooting until they jumped in to try to save him after he failed to resurface.

Divers soon reached Ayala, but he was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

An autopsy Monday found the death “consistent with drowning,” said Nicole Meyer, Monroe County’s chief deputy coroner.

Ayala and two friends were in town Saturday to watch the state high school track championships, then later visited the quarry.

Footage from his digital camera shows Ayala was apparently injured when he hit the water’s surface after making his leap, a Monroe County police report said.

“He hit the water with his face forward and it appeared that his head snapped back when he hit the water,” the report said. “He did not resurface.”

Police released chilling images Monday taken from Ayala’s camera showing him and his friends jumping off various cliffs and walking near Sanders Quarry.

In short video clip, Ayala films the spot where he would soon make his fatal plunge.

“This is supposed to be scary,” he said in the clip.

The Academy Award-winning “Breaking Away” was about the Little 500 bicycle race held annually at Indiana University since 1951.

Advertisement

Indiana

  • 1 admits role in killing woman with shovel
    KENTLAND – A man has pleaded guilty to charges that he and a friend abducted and killed a woman by cutting her throat with a shovel and left her in a shallow grave at an abandoned northwestern Indiana farm.
  • Mitch Daniels helps raise cash for Mississippi GOP
    Two governors seen as potential 2012 presidential candidates appeared together Thursday night at a fundraiser for the Mississippi Republican Party.
  • Purdue to honor pilot hero Sullenberger
    WEST LAFAYETTE – Purdue University plans to honor alumnus Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a US Airways jetliner in the Hudson River in January 2009.
  • Tax cap foes concede defeat
    Two prominent groups that have fought against the statewide property tax caps championed by Gov. Mitch Daniels are going to sit out the November referendum on whether to put the limits into the state constitution.
  • Dry August may dull Indiana’s fall colors
    The bone-dry weather that most of Indiana has seen in recent weeks could also negatively affect the typically bright fall colors of the state’s woodlands.
  • Attorney accused of smuggling heroin into prison using condoms
    TERRE HAUTE – An investigator says an Illinois defense attorney facing federal charges for trying to smuggle heroin-filled condoms into an Indiana federal prison claims to have done it several times before.
Advertisement

  Stock Sponsor
Click here for full stock listings