From the thread running on COPA: it appears that what actually happened is that the pilot had a genuine oil leak and was getting vectors for an emergency landing. The engine died when he was on a three mile final and (rightly) he did not believe he could glide in and pulled the chute.
That's why the aircraft is swinging below the chute in the video.
This incident is similar in many ways to a Cirrus fatal accident some years ago when a pilot with engine failure made the decision to try to stretch the glide in similar circumstances and sadly didn't make it.
Cirrus company teaching as most people know is to just pull the handle - although I can't help feel that he might have done himself a favour by first positioning the aircraft so it would come down in open ground, rather than into a connurbation. That option must have been there for him.
From an earlier thread:
The CAPS, by the way - it's there, and going through the training material, there really isn't anything there I could find saying "as soon as you're unhappy, pull the handle". There were many points where the advice was along the lines of "do this, do that, consider whether you should pull the handle", then do the following if you didn't". Engine failures were treated in that way for example - establish glide - pick field - position - decide if you're going to manage - if not pull handle - if you can land carry on and do so.
We also talked through the whole "pull early, pull often" phrase, which: going through the training material: basically meant that if the aircraft is out of control pull the handle before the aeroplane passes out of the safe operation envelope, and when any emergencies are going on, always go through the question of whether you should be using CAPS. Frankly, I can't fault any of that - it's pretty much the same as military training with regard to an ejector seat.
As best we can establish at the moment: that corresponds quite closely to what this pilot did.