By Noor-Jehan Yoro Badat
"You're either busy living or busy dying" was a saying that Tammy Fisher loved to tell John Gaspar, her boyfriend of nearly two years.
Fisher plummeted to her death on Saturday afternoon when 70 percent of her paraglider wing collapsed, making it difficult for her to correct before she could land at a designated site. She fell to the ground from 100m and was killed instantly.
The sporty and adventurous Fisher, 26, "had such a lust for life and was basically doing what she loved, but her death doesn't make it any easier", a heartbroken Gaspar, 38, said.
Gaspar, from Northcliff, Joburg, on Sunday described the tragic events that unfolded.
He said they had driven to one of Fisher's favourite flying sites, called Bambi, just outside Lydenburg in Mpumalanga. The conditions were perfect, and Fisher had the first flight of the day.
"Tammy had already completed a flight of about 30 minutes and she was really flying very well," said Gaspar calmly.
"She radioed me to say that she was thinking about landing, because we usually take turns in paragliding. But I radioed her back to say she was having an awesome flight and to continue flying."
She hadn't radioed him back, and instead he saw that she had carried on flying. Five minutes later, he saw that she was losing altitude in preparation for her landing.
"I radioed her again to say I would pick her up," said Gaspar.
He got into his car and drove to the recovery site, which was a couple of kilometres away.
For about two minutes he lost sight of her. Then, as he turned towards a point on the road where the landing site was more visible, he saw that her glider was on the ground, short of the landing area.
Two men who operate the flying site were rushing towards her. Gaspar knew something was wrong.
"Usually, you would be seeing her packing her glider away. So I tried to make radio contact, but there was no response.
"I parked the car and ran over. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know how bad it was," said Gaspar, trying to keep his emotions in check.
"We tried to revive her, but it was clear that she had been killed on impact. From what I could see, she was bleeding severely," added Gaspar.
In those few minutes that Gaspar hadn't seen Fisher land, he realised that a huge collapse on her paraglider wing had prevented her from landing safely.
"Normally a pilot would be able to correct that collapse, but unfortunately the collapse on her wing was so big that she was unable to correct it.
"While in the air, the paraglider went into a spin and Tammy must have been caught in the lines. The glider then reinflated itself and then dived forward as it got caught in the wind. She must have fallen about 100m to her death," Gaspar said.
He went to fetch the police, and not long afterwards Gaspar phoned Fisher's parents, who had immigrated to Canada earlier this year. Fisher was their only child.
"Her parents are gutted, of course, and are flying out to South Africa. Her father wanted to find out from me whether she suffered and I said 'no', she was killed instantly," said Gaspar.
The 300km drive back to Joburg was hard for him.
"It's a bit surreal at the moment," said an inconsolable Gaspar, adding that the "sadness comes in stages".
The couple were both sports enthusiasts. They loved mountain climbing, paragliding and scuba diving, and had met while doing the latter.
"She loved animals and for many years did a lot of equestrian showjumping. She was a provincial tri-athlete.
"We'd been paragliding for the same amount of time. We started a course about a year-and-a-half ago. She already had about 80 flights, so she had a fair amount of experience."
Apart from both working in different branches of BMW, they had identical interests.
"We shared experiences and did everything together. Until this point, I had never met anyone who was such a good match," Gaspar said. |
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