I was spinning fast, plunging 4,000ft... then I hit the ground
Wife tells trial of terrifying fall after parachute failed
THE Scots wife of an Army sergeant yesterday described the terrifying moment her parachute failed to open and she plummeted 4,000ft.
Victoria Cilliers told a court how she did not look down as she frantically tried to untangle her reserve chute while spinning helplessly towards the ground, before ‘everything went black’.
Her husband, 38-year-old Emile Cilliers, is accused of trying to murder her by sabotaging her main and reserve parachutes the day before the near-fatal fall on April 5, 2015.
Mrs Cilliers, 42, originally from Haddington, East Lothian, told Winchester Crown Court: ‘I jumped and pulled my parachute and there were issues as soon as it deployed.
‘The main parachute was turning, I got rid of the twists. I was shaking and absolutely terrified. I wanted to be back home or on the ground. I did not really understand what was happening, I decided to cut away – I remember thinking that no one was going to question it if I did.
‘Straightaway as the reserve deployed I could feel something was not right, I was spinning, spinning really fast. I got the twists out but the G-force was incredible. I didn’t look at the ground, there was no point. I know when I hit the ground there was a metallic bang. Then everything went black.’
Her husband, a member of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, is alleged to have tangled her main chute so it could not deploy and removed vital links from his wife’s reserve canopy, meaning it was not connected to her harness on one side.
In the incident, which happened at Netheravon Airfield, Mrs Cilliers suffered a broken pelvis, ribs and spinal injuries.
Prosecutors also allege that a week before the incident, Cilliers damaged a gas fitting at their martial home in Amesbury, Wiltshire, in a bid to kill her in an explosion.
Jurors previously heard that Cilliers, who had racked up £22,000 worth of debt, wrongly believed he stood to receive £120,000 from his wife’s life insurance if she died.
Mrs Cilliers was yesterday forced to deny claims she tampered with the parachute herself. The court heard that she had considered suicide as her marriage fell apart.
The experienced skydiver said: ‘There was a mental battle I was dealing with. I was not confident [before jumping]. I ended up in tears on the plane.’
Asked by defence QC Elizabeth Marsh if she had tampered with her own parachute, Mrs Cilliers responded: ‘No.’
The court later heard how she was interviewed twice by officers in the month after the incident, changing sections of her statement.
It was revealed that between the two interviews, officers told Mrs Cilliers that her husband had been cheating and intended to leave.
Mrs Cilliers said she was ‘humiliated’ and when asked if she wanted to make a new statement, she agreed, to ‘paint a worse picture’ of her husband.
Prosecutor Michael Bowes QC said Mrs Cilliers version of events ‘did not stack up’ and had changed a number of times. Mrs Cilliers replied: ‘As I have said before, I had elaborated.’
Cilliers denies two counts of attempted murder and one of criminal damage reckless as to the endangerment of life.
The trial continues.
‘There was a metallic bang... it all went black’