Come back, come back!
Teacher’s screams as she frantically clung to student’s leg for TWO MINUTES in bid to stop her leaping 5,000ft from plane
A BRITISH teacher who clung to a Cambridge student’s leg before she leapt 5,000ft from their plane screamed at her: ‘Come back, come back!’
As they soared above Madagascar, Ruth Johnson grabbed Alana Cutland as she opened the door – having just been shown how to do so in a safety demonstration.
She grappled with the student for two minutes as the light aircraft rocked from side to side. The pilot of the single-propeller plane even flew it one-handed as he used the other to try to close the door.
But Miss Cutland, 19, ignored the desperate pleas of Mrs Johnson, 51, a married mother of two from Banbury, Oxfordshire.
Local police chief Spinola Nomenjanahary said Mrs Johnson cried ‘come back, come back!’ but ‘Alana said nothing back’.
‘Ruth said it all happened so fast she was lucky to even catch hold of her leg in time,’ he said.
‘Eventually Ruth ran out of strength. Her own seatbelt was cutting into her.’
Mrs Johnson’s tearful husband, Matthew Smith, said last night: ‘She’s our Wonder Woman. We are all so proud of her.
‘She has been through a harrowing, awful ordeal and she just needs time and space to recover.
‘Ruth was going out of her way to chaperone the poor girl and tried with all of her strength to save her life.
‘Ruth’s bravery was stunning. But at the end of it all, a family has lost a daughter. That’s foremost in all our minds. We are all just so proud of Ruth. She needs time with her family to come to terms with what she witnessed.
‘It will never leave her. It will stay with her for the rest of her life. We are all going to have to learn to live with it, one way or another.’
Mrs Johnson, a teacher at £8,100a-term Winchester House School in Northamptonshire, held on to the natural sciences student’s leg to stop her falling while half her body was hanging out of the fourseater Cessna 182.
But she could not prevent Miss Cutland, of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, from falling out and plunging an estimated 5,000ft.
Police and the military on the Indian Ocean island, off Africa’s east coast, are still searching areas of the jungle roamed by cat-like carnivores called fossas. Gervais Damasy, the director of Madagascar’s air accident investigation bureau, said pilot Mahefa Tahina Rantoanina, 33, had tried to shut the door with his right hand as he held the controls with his left.
He added: ‘She [Mrs Johnson] was very brave. She did her best for her and the pilot did the same. The plane could have crashed.’
Investigators are probing whether Miss Cutland suffered a reaction to her anti-malaria drugs. The Mail can reveal the teenager had paranoia and hallucinations in the days before the tragedy, on the tropical Anjajavy peninsula where she was studying a rare species of crab during the summer holidays.
Dr Elodi, a Madagascan academic leading her on the project, said: ‘She arrived on July 16, very enthusiastic to start work in this beautiful place.’
But within four days, staff at the plush resort where she was staying noticed she was ‘deeply worried’ about her ability to conduct the research, which involved picking up and examining tiny crabs.
Dr Elodi told police: ‘She was afraid she would go to jail if she did not complete the research.
‘A harrowing, awful ordeal’
She even said, “It sounds silly when you say it out loud.”
‘She thought she was not good enough, but we told her it was just a matter of practice.’
As paranoia set in, Miss Cutland held a series of fraught phone calls with her parents, Alison and Neil Cutland, both 63. Mr Nomenjanahary said: ‘Her mother sent an email to the hotel manager saying she was worried about her daughter. It said they were preoccupied by [her] psychological state of mind, based on their phone conversations. The next day her mother phoned the hotel manager and said, “We have difficulty recognising our own daughter on the phone”.’
Miss Cutland was urged to go home, and agreed. Mrs Johnson, who was volunteering with children in the village on a placement from her school, offered to help the Cutlands by accompanying their daughter on the two-hour flight back to the capital.
But on the night before the fateful July 25 flight, Mrs Johnson was already struggling with Miss Cutland. Mr Nomenjanahary said: ‘Alana was having hallucinations and seemed disorientated. She packed her bag but kept forgetting where she had left it. She did not eat any dinner.
‘Ruth took her to her room and made sure she was all right, but in the morning she found her sitting in a chair with a blank look, staring into a void. She looked like she had not slept all night. She looked lost. She wouldn’t talk. They told Alana to have some breakfast, but she just picked at some fruit.’
Miss Cutland was described by her family as a ‘bright, independent young woman’ who had a ‘thirst for discovering more of the world’. In a statement released through the Foreign Office, they said: ‘Alana was a bright, independent young woman, who was loved and admired by all those that knew her.
‘[She] grasped every opportunity that was offered to her with enthusiasm and a sense of adventure, always seeking to extend her knowledge and experience in the best ways possible.
‘We are heartbroken at the loss of our wonderful, beautiful daughter, who lit up every room.’