Scot’s parachute plunge a ‘miracle escape’, jury told

HORRIFIED onlookers assumed a Scot must have been killed when she plummeted 4,000ft after her parachute failed to open, a court was told yesterday.

It was a ‘miracle’ Victoria Cilliers, 42, survived the fall, jurors heard.

Her husband, Army Sergeant Emile Cilliers, 38, is accused of tampering with her parachute in an attempt to kill her and claim her £120,000 life insurance.

Yesterday, a court heard how the mother of two spiralled to the ground after her main parachute did not deploy properly.

Two vital links were also missing from her reserve canopy – meaning it was not connected fully to her harness.

Onlookers presumed Mrs Cilliers, a physiotherapist and former Army officer, must be dead, skydive instructor Mark Bayada told Winchester Crown Court, Hampshire.

He went to help and found she was alive – although she had broken her leg, pelvis and several ribs, and suffered spinal damage.

The former Army Sergeant Major said he knew immediately something was ‘unusual’ about the fall – at Netheravon Airfield, Wiltshire, on April 5, 2015 – because reserve chutes should never fail.

Mr Bayada – part of the Red Devils display team – told the court that after being alerted to the accident, an airfield worker told him ‘there’s been a malfunction, it’s serious, someone has been killed’.

He went to help along with two doctors, members of the airfield’s dive club, who performed first aid.

When they lifted Mrs Cilliers, who is originally from Haddington, East Lothian, Mr Bayada saw that the wires from the reserve canopy were not properly connected to the harness and he ‘knew straight away’ something was wrong.

He also told prosecutor Michael Bowes, QC, that ‘you should not be able to survive that, it’s a miracle’.

Prosecutors allege Cilliers also damaged a gas fitting at the home he shared with his wife in Amesbury, Wiltshire, to try to kill her in an explosion.

Cilliers, of Aldershot, Hampshire, denies two counts of attempted murder and one of damaging property to recklessly endanger life.

The trial continues.