Five years on from Shoreham,neighbouring we’re still waiting for the truth
Airshow disaster families’ heartache
AS they stand on a bridge near the crash scene at exactly 1.22pm – the Schilts will mark five years since their son was taken from them.
Jacob, 23, was one of 11 men who lost their lives when a Hawker Hunter jet performing for crowds at the Shoreham Airshow plunged on to the A27 below.
Parents Bob and Caroline are still waiting for the definitive truth about exactly what caused the tragedy.
Talented footballer Jacob was on his way to play a match with friend Matthew Grimstone, also 23, when the plane exploded in a fireball on the West Sussex road on August 22, 2015.
The pair were killed instantly. Bob and Caroline return to the
toll bridge, where a memorial now stands, every year at the moment of the disaster.
They are sometimes joined by other grieving families, with whom they have formed a close bond over their shared loss.
“Five of us lost boys of about the same age and I know that sounds crass to say it gives you something in common, but we really understand how each other feeling,” Caroline, 60, told the Mirror.
“We go the toll bridge... And we go there for the time it actually happened, and we meet up there for a little while.”
But even though this will be their fifth annual pilgrimage to the crash site, the anger of losing their only son in such a senseless disaster is no less fresh.
Andy Hill, the pilot at the helm of the vintage plane during the botched loop-the-loop, was last year acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter.
And the inquest into their deaths has been delayed by another year due to the pandemic. The couple, from Brighton, is
East Sussex, who also have a daughter Louise, 31, admit seeing ex-RAF pilot Hill, 56, walk free following the sevenweek trial was a bitter pill to swallow.
“Yes I can’t deny it – I was angry,” said Caroline, a retired drama teacher.
Bob, 66, added: “But we can understand it and we can see all of the reasons why it happened – the main reason being the very high threshold for gross negligence.”
The court heard Hill had attempted the risky “bent loop” move too low and too slow to complete it.
But he was so self-assured the family believe he has somehow managed to block out the horror of what happened.
Caroline said: “I think he had a cavalier attitude. He was very keen to demonstrate his knowledge of flying and to show what an expert he was at flying. And two-and-half days of that became quite wearing.
“He seems to have been able to somehow shut off from what he did.”
The pilot from Buntingford, Herts, miraculously survived when he was thrown from the cockpit. He later awoke from a coma with no memory of the crash or the two days preceding it. Worthing United players Matt and Jacob are buried near one another, and their families work together to host a charity football tournament in their memory every year.
In a statement released to the Mirror ahead of the anniversary, the Grimstones said: “It feels as if the last five years has passed us by. We miss Matt dearly.
“Our focus has been and will remain on getting answers as to why and how this tragedy was allowed to happen.”
The inquest into all 11 deaths is set to go ahead in September next year.