Parachute wife tells how ‘everything went black’
THE WIFE of an Army sergeant accused of attempting to murder her has described how “everything went black” as she struggled to control her parachute which allegedly had been sabotaged.
In a video police interview shown to Winchester Crown Court, Victoria Cilliers described how the near-fatal jump at the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon, Wiltshire, went wrong on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015.
Her husband, Emile, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, is on trial for two counts of attempted murder.
Mrs Cilliers said: “Straightaway I knew something was not quite right, it had a lot of twists and the canopy wasn’t floating.
“I got out of the twists and one of the risers was wrapped around which is a packing issue.
“The canopy wasn’t flying properly so I made the decision to cut away the main.
“I can’t remember if I pulled the reserve or it deployed automatically. Either or, I could feel the reserve fly and again straightaway I felt something wasn’t right and it was very twisted.”
Mrs Cilliers, an Army physiotherapist, said the chances of a main parachute failing was one in 750 jumps but for the reserve to fail as well was “one-in-a-million”.
Continuing her description of the reserve failure, she said: “I tried to deal with the situation as best I could which was trying to untangle it to get the twists out.
“I’m trying to fly something that is spinning quite fast, it’s like a centrifuge, you end up facing the ground spinning quite rapidly.”
Describing the moments after the impact, she said: “I know I opened my eyes and I saw the landing area, I saw a friend of mine who is a doctor and other personnel from the APA and Paul Cain, a doctor, and lots of other people around, that’s just a brief snapshot.”
Cilliers denies two counts of attempted murder and one of criminal damage recklessly endangering life.
The hearing continues.