Parachutist who survived fall when husband cut her chute jumps again wearing 'lucky shoes'

A mother of two, who survived a 4,000ft fall after her husband deliberately tampered with her parachute, has taken to the skies once again wearing the same "lucky shoes" she had on during the fateful jump.

Victoria Cilliers, 42, a qualified skydiving instructor, was left with devastating injuries when she plummeted to the ground on Easter Sunday 2015.

The parachute jump had been a present from her husband, Army sergeant, Emile Cilliers, and marked her return to the sport after giving birth to their second child.

But her world fell apart when he was arrested and charged with attempted murder after police discovered that the her cords of her chute had been cut.

Earlier this year Cilliers was jailed for life and was told he will have to serve a minimum of 18-years.

Now to mark her astonishing return to fitness and to thank the medics who helped save her life, Victoria has jumped from an aircraft once again.

And she wore the same pair of navy and turquoise trainers she had been wearing for the fateful jump.

"What are they if not my lucky parachuting shoes? I'm still here and still walking. I was always going to lace them back up, if this day ever came," she told the Mail on Sunday.

The former Army captain did the tandem jump in order to raise money for the Wiltshire Air Ambulance, which she credits with saving her life.

She said: "I owe them, my children owe them. I am alive, they have a mummy and a fully functioning mummy at that.

"I had two potentially fatal injuries, the burst bones in my back and a fragment of my pelvis which was lying right by a major artery.

"If the first responders had been so much as a millimetre out when they dealt with it, I would be dead or in a wheelchair now."

Cilliers was convicted of attempted murder at a second trial with the first ending in a hung jury.

The 38-year-old South African born fitness instructor was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and also a third count of recklessly endangering life by tampering with a gas fitting at their home.

Victoria was in court to see him sentenced and led away to prison.

Sentencing Cilliers, Mr Justice Sweeney said he was a "danger to the public" and added: "This was wicked offending of extreme gravity.

"Your offending was extremely serious with your two attempts to murder your wife. They were planned and carried out in cold blood for your own selfish purposes which include financial gain.

"You have shown yourself to be a person of quite exceptional callousness who will stop at nothing to satisfy his own desires, material or otherwise. Nor have you shown the least sign of remorse."

Describing the effect on Mrs Cilliers, who asked for her victim impact statement not be made public, the judge said: "That your wife recovered at all was miraculous, she undoubtedly suffered severe physical harm and she must have suffered psychological harm in the terror of the fall and since.

"She appears to have recovered from the physical harm but not, having seen her in the witness box in length, from the psychological harm."