While enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime trip, a woman from Dublin perished in a horrifying skydiving accident, reports The Mirror.
Polish citizen Paulina Biskup, who was born and raised in Dublin, took to the skies Tuesday at the Aguapanela paragliding location in Roldanillo, which is west of Bogota, Colombia.
The 38-year-old encountered problems barely minutes after launching herself in a parachute. Witnesses watched in horror as she slipped out of her harness and fell many feet in the air as her parachute approached the ground, reports The Mirror.
Shouts can be heard as her parachute collapses in on itself, plunging her into the long grass below, according to video footage taken at the site, according to Mirror UK.
She is thought to have perished as a result of the forceful contact with the earth, reports The Mirror.
Paulina, who attended Trinity College Dublin in 2010 and lived in the Irish city, had gone to jump with her partner and several friends.
At the time, there was a paragliding competition in the region, but they chose not to participate. The Aguapanela launch location is well-liked for its stunning vistas and favourable air currents, and Roldanillo is referred to be Colombia’s “paragliding capital” because of its perfect paragliding conditions, reports The Mirror.
According to Roldanillo authorities, the accident is being investigated.
An American lady who survived an aircraft crash last year after her parachute failed gave a terrifying account of the experience.
Virginia Beach resident Jordan Hatmaker attempted her final jump of the day, but her parachute malfunctioned, sending her spinning out of control and hitting the earth at more than sixty miles per hour.
She told the Mirror: “Everything was fine during freefall, but then I pulled my chute. The pilot chute wrapped around my right leg a few times. I tried desperately to get it off. Time slowed down for me but I was falling so fast. I thought I had a lot more time than I did. I was trying to get it off my leg, and then I tried to get my shoe off but I had double knotted my shoelaces because in a previous jump one of my shoes fell off. (The instructor actually caught it in the air), reports The Mirror.
“At 750ft the automatic activation device fired, which is like a reserve parachute which opens when you get to a certain altitude without deploying the main parachute. My reserve parachute came out which jolted enough to make my main parachute come out. But the two canopies were flying next to each other, dragging away from each other and started me spinning into the ground. This was 200ft above the ground. It happened so fast. I was completely out of control. I just remember thinking that the ground was coming up really really fast. And I remember thinking: ‘This is going to hurt,'” reports The Mirror.
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