Face of British base jumper who died after crashing into the side of 9,500ft mountain

This is the first picture of a British base jumper who died in Italy after leaping from a 9,500ft peak.

Robert Haggarty crashed after launching himself off a mountain in the Dolomites, wearing a wingsuit.

The 47-year-old, from Andover, Hampshire, reportedly hit the rock face after deploying his parachute and fell into a ledge 600ft down.

The Italian Alpine Rescue Service battled difficult conditions to reach his body on the Busazza mountain in the Monte Civetta range, north of Venice.

Three rescuers, lowered from a helicopter, carried Mr Haggarty’s body on a stretcher to a rocky ledge where it was winched up by the aircraft. A spokesman for the rescue service said: “One theory we are looking at is that he didn’t time his take-off well and was too close to the side of the mountain.”

Married Mr Haggarty was with 25 friends when the accident happened.

He and other jumpers had been flown to the top of the mountain in a helicopter. The alarm was raised by hikers and climbers who witnessed the fall. An orthopaedic surgeon from Austria was killed base jumping from the same mountain in 2017.

The pursuit involves leaping with a parachute or wingsuit from a building, bridge or cliff. It has a fatality and injury rate around 50 times higher than parachuting from an aircraft.

Base jumpers wearing wingsuits fly at up to 120 miles per hour before deploying a parachute and floating down to the ground.

According to a Facebook profile, Mr Haggarty, who married his wife Joanna in 2010, travelled around the world to take part in the extreme sport.

His last trip was to Monte Brento in Italy in 2016. He was also pictured jumping in Sandnes in Norway, and Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland.