A YOUNG woman who was terrified of heights died in an aircraft crash as she prepared to make her first parachute jump. Victoria Delacroix, 22, had wanted to challenge her lifelong phobia and signed up for the jump while working in America for the summer.

The aircraft’s engines are thought to have failed in mid-air and it flew into an electricity pole on Saturday. She was taken to hospital but later died of her injuries.

Yesterday her family described her as “our beautiful little princess”. Miss Delacroix, from Beckenham, southeast London, had graduated from the University of Derby and wanted to join the Armed Forces.

She had completed a degree in geography and had decided to spend the summer in America, where she took a job working with disabled children at a summer camp in Sullivan, Missouri.

She was due to finish her job in a fortnight and had planned to visit the Grand Canyon and other attractions before returning to Britain and joining the Armed Forces.

Four other passengers died when the twin-engine light aircraft crashed, and two more were seriously injured, one of whom was Kimberley Dear, 21, an Australian friend of Miss Delacroix. She remains in a critical condition.

Witnesses said that the right engine of the aircraft apparently burst into flames soon after take-off. People from nearby homes heard one passenger crying for help from the wreckage. They doused the flames with garden hoses until emergency services arrived.

Among the dead was Scott Cowan, the co-owner of Quantum Leap Skydiving, which organised the jump. He was flying the plane.

Miss Delacroix was a former pupil at Cator Park girls’ school in Beckenham. In a posting on the Friends Reunited website, written four years ago, she told her old friends: “I’ve just finished 2 years at Bromley college studying travel and tourism and now I’m a Travel Advisor! But I’m still a dippy blonde, although my tongue stud has now gone. Take care everyone.”

Her mother, Susan Delacroix, 56, said: “Everyone we have told has been devastated. She was a beautiful young woman, and now she’s gone and we have to say goodbye.” The family had become anxious when she did not telephone home on Saturday evening after making the jump.

Mrs Delacroix added: “Victoria normally called on Saturdays and I was lying in bed on Saturday night wondering why she had not phoned.

“She had sent a text message just before the plane took off, saying that she was going on the jump, but had not called later.

“Then the phone rang. It was the hospital saying Victoria had been badly injured in a plane crash . . . I was frantically packing when the phone rang again about an hour later. It was the hospital saying they hadn’t been able to save her. I was numb. I couldn’t cry. I just started shaking and couldn’t stop.”

Mrs Delacroix is considering a civil claim for damages against the skydiving centre.

The British Consulate in nearby St Louis is liaising with the American authorities so that Miss Delacroix’s body can be flown home to Britain.

The National Transportation Safety Board in America said that its investigation into the accident was under way.

Quantum Leap Skydiving said that four of the passengers were experienced skydivers.

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