A STUDENT at Oxford University has died after a spectacular human catapult stunt went wrong.

Dino Yankov, 19, a member of a dangerous sports club, fell short of a safety net after being fired 100ft through the air from a copy of a medieval siege engine known as a trebuchet.

Mr Yankov, a Bulgarian who was a first-year biochemistry undergraduate at Wadham College, had serious leg and spinal injuries and was airlifted to hospital in Bristol, where he died five hours later. Police are investigating the incident with the Health and Safety Executive, and the catapult’s operators may face prosecution.

Mr Yankov and 20 other members of the Oxford Stunt Factory, which is not an official university club, travelled to Middlemoor Water Park at Woolavington near Bridgwater, Somerset, on Sunday to experience being thrown by the machine in an arc into a safety net. Witnesses said that he was the sixth member of his party to be thrown by the machine, but fell short. He struck the side of the safety net and fell 30ft to the ground.

David Aitkenhead, who built the trebuchet, said he had no clues as to what had gone wrong.

“I saw the accident but it is impossible to say what happened,” he said. “He missed the landing by falling short of the net; he didn’t fly far enough and hit the ground. It’s difficult to say how far he fell, as the flight is not a straight drop but a curving arc; he didn’t actually fall, but was being thrown.”

Trebuchets work by having heavy counterweights on one end of a pivoted arm which throw a projectile with great force from the other end: the Woolavington one uses one tonne of lead as its counterweight.

Mr Aitkenhead, who previously ran a bungee-jumping business, said that before the accident he had told those waiting their turn to be thrown that it was an “extreme activity” and not guaranteed to be totally safe. A spokesman for the Oxford Stunt Factory said that the club was “devastated” by the accident. “The net is the size of a tennis court, so why it didn’t catch him I have no idea,” the spokesman said. “Other people had been on it before, and it was fine. It had been tested; all the safety checks and test weights had been done to judge distances, and then this happened.

“We are beside ourselves at the moment, and don’t know what to say or do. Dino was a fantastic guy and had been a member since the start of this academic year. He had done a lot of jumps for charity, was friendly, intelligent and as brave as a bull.”

The trebuchet, which has fired a total of 50 people through the air this year, was closed immediately after the accident and may not be used again.

Mr Yankov’s accident, although the most serious, was not the first. Stella Young, 44, bounced out of the safety net when she was catapulted by the trebuchet two years ago. She crashed to the ground and was taken to hospital with a broken pelvis. The safety net was subsequently improved.

Ms Young’s boyfriend Richard Wicks, 29, spent two years building the device with Mr Aitkenhead, and was the first to be thrown from it in a flight lasting four seconds.

Oxford Stunt Factory was set up in the 1980s for enthusiasts of extreme sports. Among its best-known stunts was a 700ft bungee jump down the face of a dam for the James Bond film Goldeneye.

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