2010/03/11
AN EAST London woman who miraculously survived a 1000-metre plunge after a failed skydiving attempt in Grahamstown at the weekend, said she had been pushed from the aircraft against her will after watching three jumpers using their emergency parachutes.
Lareece Butler, 26, plummeted to the ground after her jump on Saturday, but said she had changed her mind about jumping and had been pushed from the plane by a woman, believed to be employed by EC Skydivers in Grahamstown.
Her claim was denied by EC Skydivers manager Joos Vos.
Butler survived the fall and sustained a fractured pelvis and bruising after claiming neither her parachute nor reserve chute opened properly.
Butler was rushed to Settlers’ Hospital then taken to Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth where she is recovering in the high care section of the hospital’s intensive care unit.
The mother of a son, Tristan, aged two, said throughout the experience she had prayed she would survive and return to her son. She said she regretted ever skydiving.
“This was not the first time I skydived. I had tried it in Jo’burg so we all decided to do it this past weekend in Grahamstown.
“We received training and we were told that if we had problems, to open the white emergency chute,” Butler said from her hospital bed.
“We were on the plane and there were five of us. I was the fourth one to jump and my boyfriend was going to jump in the second group when we were returned.
“I watched the other three guys jump but all three of them got tangled in their cords and one of them was spinning,” she said.
Butler said when she saw that the three men had experienced problems she started having second thoughts. She said she told an accompanying experienced jumper that she no longer wanted to jump.
“I told her that I did not want to jump anymore. I told her to take us down. She pushed me and I held onto the airplane with the wind rushing past me.
“She pushed me again and I fell. I tried opening the emergency chute but it did not open. I said ‘God save me please. I have a son’ and after that I do not remember anything before waking up here on Sunday.”
She said she was very sad that the woman on the aircraft had resorted to pushing her. She said there were two other people in the aircraft when she was pushed, the pilot and the woman who pushed her.
“I could have died because of this.”
Butler said she hoped to be released soon so that she could be close to her family in East London.
Vos said he had visited Butler in hospital yesterday and was happy to see that she was recovering quickly.
However he denied that she had been pushed and said that they had written statements from the pilot and jump master in the plane which stated that Butler had jumped willingly.
“These claims are unfounded. We have investigated these allegations and obtained statements from the people in the aircraft.
“We have submitted everything to Mark Bellingan, national safety and training officer for the Parachute Association of South Africa, and there is nothing that states that she was pushed,” said Vos.
He said Butler’s parachute did open as it was a static line jump, which means when a jumper left the aircraft, a line from the aircraft automatically opened the parachute.
“One of the jumpers who exited the plane before her (Butler) did perform a reserve procedure. This is common practice if they think they are experiencing problems.
“Lareece jumped from the plane in an unstable body position and this is why her chute become tangled. She also did not perform her reserve procedure,” said Vos.
Butler was accompanied by her boyfriend Glen McGuire and his colleague and had attended static line jump classes on Friday evening and Saturday morning.
McGuire said the entire experience had been traumatic because he had been standing on the landing strip waiting for Butler when he saw her plummet to the ground. — By LEE-ANNE BUTLER, The Herald, Avusa Group News
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